can someone please suggest an appropriate linux distro?

Hi all
here is the situation. I have an old pentium 100 box that I am trying to make excuses not to toss out. I want to hook it up to my stereo and access it via a web browser to tell it to play MP3 songs.

By the way, it only has 16mb of RAM.

Do they still make linux distributions that will run on this type of hardware? I can't find my old copy of redhat 5.2 I ran on the thing anywhere.

I'm downloading gentoo now. Maybe I'll be able to configure that.

Anyway, if anyone can suggest a distro that will run these on my hardware, please do:

MPG123
Apache or some other webserver that will run with php or perl
an sql server of some decription (not essential)
I'm sure I've forgotten something. I'll let you know when I remember it.

Preferably something that is relatively easy, because I don't have a lot of linux experience, but then again i enjoy getting my hands dirty in these things.

FreeBSD will do the trick.

The last thing you want is a GUI environment with only 16MB of ram and a P100.

I would also suggest 4.9 STABLE, instead of the more Bleeding edge 5.2.1.
http://www.freebsd.org
Cheers.

i had a bit of trouble getting the sound card to work on freeBSD. It's a sound blaster 16 I think. Any ideas?

I use slackware 8.1 on an old pentium MMX box, It has plenty of server options

Which version of FBSD is it? 4.9 or 5.x ?
It matters, because devices are handled differently.

Cheers.

Freebsd 4.9

@Vladdrac
If I can't get freeBSD to work I'll try slackware.

Daemonguy,
I can't get freeBSD to work with my network card. And I don't have any other network cards spare. (BTW its a D-Link DE528 (I think))

I'm downloading slackware now. I know my card has linux drivers so hopefully that will work.

Vladdrac, should I use 8.1 or 9.0?

id go for 8.1 cause you have an older computer.

btw, you may have to download a driver for your network card for freeBSD. you should not give up that easily, but hey try them both. what is your network card?

dlink de528.

But it doesn't matter anymore. I've given up on that machine, the RAM died and I don't have any spare 72 pin SIMMs. I'll be keeping an eye out on ebay for a faster machine that can do the job.

Thanks for all your help guys.

Well, it can be daunting getting FBSD to work, but nothing worthwhile comes easy.
That having been said, if it's supposed by the platform -- as nearly everything is it seems -- it should be nothing more than permitting the proper driver in the kernl and recompiling.
As for a support system, try the FreeBSD mailing lists; though I would search them first for possible previous answers to your particular ordeal. I have yet to search for a specific problem and not find the answer.
Course, I enjoy spending quality time with my systems in an effort to find the right answer myself, but hey, that's the geek in me.

FBSD is not for everyone; it's for those that have the willingingness to get under the hood and get their hands dirty. You will not find a more stable and reliable platform though for X86 hardware.

Cheers.

Unfortunately, I can't use that box anymore, I don't have RAM for it. I have a friend who finally upgraded from the 486 box he has had for 12 years, and I am trying to convince him to give that to me.

I guess that, when I get that, I will have to run FBSD.

I'll let you know how that goes.

By the way, I wrote the PHP and perl scripts today using my RH9 laptop. To play songs I have a perl script that queries a mysql db every 5 secs. I have PHP scripts that put an entry into that database when a song is to be played.

Now here is my problem. How can I create a link/button/whatever on the web-based frontend (in php) to stop playback of the current song?