best distro/windowmgr/apps for old systems

[waxmop]

So I just picked a 200mhz 32mb ram 10gig hard drive computer, and I'm about to install linux on it.

What's the best distro for limited-resource systems? Am interested in debian, but I have no idea how to install it. This computer doesn't boot off a cd, but I've got the debian cds. I think I would need to boot off a floppy.

How do I minimize the number of processes running inside a window manager?

Thanks

[Dark Ninja]

Well, as long as you don't run KDE/Gnome/any other X-Windows type program, you can pretty much run any distro off *almost* any system. However, Debian and Slackware are usually recommended for the very slow systems. The reason for this being that Debian and Slackware do not install a ton of extra "stuff" on your system that you don't need. (Although, in your case - except for the RAM, you are doing pretty okay for running Linux. And, you can fix that problem by giving yourself a swap partition.)

Yeah, you'll need to create boot disks in order to access the Debian CD. There should be instructions either on Debian's website, or on the CD itself.


Dark Ninja

[mrBen]

You call *THAT* a minimal system? It is a bit low on memory for KDE or GNOME to run slickly, but it should run other WM with no problems at all. Debian will boot off floppy no problems - installation isn't as hard as all that. And if it's got a net connection then apt-get will fill you with joy :D

[Derango]

HAH! I've installed linux on a k6-2 233mhz laptop with 32MB of ram and a 2.5 GB hard drive!!

Just as long as you don't expect X to run super fast, you should be ok with just about any WM (except for KDE/Gnome...they crawl)