Linux suggestions???

[stressmaster5000]

I need to run a bare bones Linux box with a fairly old and slow computer. What version of Linux would you suggest? Here is the specs for the box I currently want to use for it.

Dell
933mghz Pentium 3 processor
256 k of Rambus Inline Memory(that expensive stuff-2 slots filled with 128 sticks)
45gb HD
64mgb Nvidia Video card
Creative Sound Blaster sound card

what else you need to know?

If this box is just too shy on memory I can get a slower processor P3 7-800 mghz with 512 or 768 k of plain sdram.

Any help???

[SlackOne]

...you mean 256M of memory, right?  Not k?  Because that's like Commodore 64 levels of RAM

Needless to say, the "mainstream" Linux desktop derivatives are going to be too bloaty to run on that.  Ubuntu, SUSE, or Fedora are pretty much right out on that much RAM.

My first impulse would be to throw Puppy Linux on it.  There are other "lean" distros out there, but Puppy is designed to work well on older computers, and work pretty damn fast at that.  It's a little quirky...some of the control panels seem to be held together with duct tape and ambition, but for a mothballer, it makes a pretty good desktop OS.  There are also a billionty derivatives purpose built for specific needs, called "Puplets", that are distributed as separate downloads.  Lucid Puppy is one I've used, as it uses Ubuntu package management tools to make installing applications much easier.

Crunchbang might be worth looking into as well.  The minimalist GUI it runs definitely takes some getting used to though.  Both of them are available for download as "Live CDs" that you can burn and give the linux a spin before actually installing it.  You can also stick them on USB sticks, but I figure that system probably has USB 1 on it, and it would be tortuously slow to run the OS over it.

[Nikos]

What functionality do you expect to get out of that box? If it's supposed to be made into a server-or-other, you may as well try one of the BSDs. Otherwise I'd suggest Debian.

[papa_bob]

try this http://www.distrowatch.com.

[Whoey]

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ ?

specs are well below your system...

[Reinier]

It doesn't really matter which distro you choose. As long as you use GNOME with the cool SAK icon



http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gnome-applications-utilities.svg

[stressmaster5000]

...you mean 256M of memory, right?  Not k?  Because that's like Commodore 64 levels of RAM

Yes, I was in a hurry when I posted this up last night.

I was planing on using this for internet and email in the living room to display internet content on my big screen TV.

[Nikos]

...you mean 256M of memory, right?  Not k?  Because that's like Commodore 64 levels of RAM

Yes, I was in a hurry when I posted this up last night.

I was planing on using this for internet and email in the living room to display internet content on my big screen TV.

I'm afraid a window manager + firefox/chrome + multiple tabs may strain a 933GHz/256M RAM computer.

[HawkeyX]

Ive run Ubuntu on similar specs a year or so ago. No lightening machine but worked ok for basic surfing etc.

[stressmaster5000]

Well, I tried Ubuntu and while it worked it did not have enough resources to surf the web.

I have settled on Linux Mint Julia 10.0 - so far it is pretty stable although not very fast due to the limited memory resources. I have been able to use Firefox and as long as I do not try more than 1 tab at a time it works OK. I plan on going through the loaded programs and removing those that I never will use.

Anybody got any ideas how to make a USB memory stick work as memory in a Linux box?

[Nikos]

You may have better luck with one of the "lightweight" browsers (e.g. epiphany, dillo, galeon, ...) Removing programs you don't use will just free up some space on disk, which just won't improve your computer's speed. You may want to have a look at what programs are _running_ by default though. WRT the USB stick being used as memory, do you mean as RAM or as an extra hard disk? The former is a _very_ bad idea, as USB sticks are far too slow and overwriting them at will may shorten their life considerably.