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What Linux distro to use for old Intel machine, that fits on CDs?
At Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:24:31 -0700 (PDT) raylopez99 wrote:
I have not been able to get a straight answer to this, despite almost a year of trying. Maybe three's the charm? Here goes again... I have an old machine, not my main machine, nearly in mothballs that somebody uses on occasion to surf the net and print a letter on a recent model HP inkjet using OpenOffice as the word processor program. The machine is running on Windows 2000. The machine is an Intel Pentium II, about 200 MHz clock, with about 500 MB RAM (or maybe it's 225, I upgraded it but forgot what it was, but I'm pretty sure it's 512 MB). The C: hard drive is only 2 GB large--the only one for the OS. This was a popular configuration in the mid to late 90s so I'm sure a lot of these machines exist in the world, so somebody must have loaded Linux on one of them. The machine has no DVD, only a CD reader. It has a late 90s but popular video card, forget the brand. What Linux distro to use for this configuration? I can, using another PC, download a distro, but then I would have to burn it onto a CD or CDs, so I would rather not do that--that is, I would rather get or buy a Linux distro that is already burnt, in proper order, onto labeled CDs to make installation easier. Visit www.cheapbytes.com. You can get CentOS 4.mumble on CDs. This should work just fine. In case you're wondering why I want to switch to Linux: though the NT system is functional, it's slow, and rumor has it that Linux is 'virus free' (or nearly so) and faster. Presumeably since Linux is virus- free I would not need antivirus (AV) software. Is this true? Eliminating AV software would free up RAM. Again, this system is not for a power user. I myself am a power user, would never think of switching to Linux. But for this lightweight user, perhaps Linux might work for them. On that sort of machine, you *won't* want to use a heavyweight GUI/Desktop -- you don't want either Gnome nor KDE. Go for a lightweight setup: fvwm for example. This will probably mean you won't get all of the pointy-clicky goodies you might be used to. I use a *very* plain X11 setup: just fvwm in MVM mode. One desktop, no start menu, no desktop icons at all: I use FVWM's 'IconBox' and a home built 'session manager' / menu launcher program written in Tcl/Tk. I start most applications from a shell xterm window. This is very lightweight and works well on older / low-powered (slower, low amount of RAM) hardware. I refuse to use new, bleeding edge hardware -- I'd rather just 'rescue' perfectly good boxes from dumpster land than spend big bucks for 'excess' processor -- I don't *need* a dual 64-bit processor *desktop* with 4gig of RAM -- about as dumb as using a monster truck with 5' tall tires to drive 1 mile to buy a quart of milk on a dry paved road on a warm sunny day. Any ideas welcome. Be advised that I also needle the posters at comp.os.linux.advocacy, but this is not a flame. I really have not been able to get a straight answer on this issue. Some common mistakes made by respondants: they recommend their favorite distro without checking the min system requirements; they recommend something they've never tried (Puppy Linux, Ubuntu, and Damn Small Linux seem to be a favorites--but I need somebody who is very familiar with a distro before I install it and find out it won't work on this archaic system); and they assume that I have fast internet access on this machine. Also, some spiteful types from comp.os.linux.advocacy (avoid this group like the plague unless you simply enjoy flaming for its own sake) recommend distros that, when I research them, find they won't work on this machine specified above, so, please cite your choice with a link if possible. I use CentOS 4.6 on my systems right now. I have an old Toshiba laptop (166mhz Pentium I, 144meg of RAM) that has WBL 3.0 on it, but I did run CentOS 4.3 on it at one point (while trying to get wireless cards to work) -- I don't at this point since the RHEL 2.6 kernel has no default support for ISA-flavor sound cards. I presently run CentOS 4.6 on a number of older machines, including: An old Dell laptop: Insperion 4000: 700mhz PII, 256meg of RAM. My desktop: a 500mhz PII with 384Meg of RAM. It was running on my older desktop: a 500mhz K6 with 256meg of RAM until its MB died -- I transplanted most of the rest of the old system to the newer box (disks, SCSI disk controller, DVD-ROM, and RAM). I have it on a 400mhz K6 with 256meg of RAM, but I don't use this latter box much -- I think its hard drive is dieing. CentOS (www.centos.org) is a GPL 'clone' of RHEL. CentOS 4 is a fairly conservative distro. It won't have bleeding edge stuff, but works well and reliably on most older hardware. While it does include 586 kernels, it does not include ISA support out-of-the-box -- this should not be a problem for you, since you seem to have a 686 (PII) and probably don't have any ISA cards, unless your MB's sound is a 'legacy' sound controller, like the one on my desktop's motherboard -- I don't care if the sound on my desktop is non-functional -- the sound on my laptop works and that is fine by me. Oh the win-modem built into the laptop is also non-functional (again I don't care -- the *external* RS232 hardware modem on my desktop works, as does the built-in Ethernet on the laptop). Thanks for your attention. RL -- Robert Heller -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar! Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk |
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