oldcomputer

ok well my computer got stolen from my apartment and so i wentto the thrift store and found a 450MHz P3 unit with 256 megs of ram. its pretty old and pretty lame but im going to put linux on my spare 200 gig Hard drive and pop it in. i was wandering if anyone could recomend a distro that would run well on such a machine

You may want to try the "small" distro's, DSL (damn small linux) and puppy linux (search google or distrowatch.com to get their homepages). i would post the links but i'm on the slowest wireless you've ever seen with the router a good 300ft away through buildings & its raining :]

i also made a post in the linux forum titled something to the effect of "whats the best distro of linux..", in that post theres a link that could be useful for you. itd be on the first or second page of the linux forum. i've been trying to find it but i've only loaded about 12 posts on the first page

I run Fedora 6 on a machine with the same processor and a gig of RAM with no problems. I've been upgrading this thing for years now without a hitch or need to upgrade any hardware on system. The machine acts as my domain controller and serves SSO and roaming profiles to ~50 clients.

That said, the Fedora desktop is pretty resource intensive (compared to other distributions), so I would assume anything would run OK on it. If you have problems with low memory (very likely), switch the Metacity window manager for Fluxbox. Note that I didn't say to replace gnome with it, just run gnome-panel, nautilus and the rest under fluxbox and you'll see huge improvements in speed and responsiveness. I'd say also KDE is right out for this system due to it's huge memory footprint.

HTH

mm..question this (heh): do you use it as a "personal desktop" at all?
that's whered i'd be curious as to how it performs.. :nods:

& with 256MB of ram you'd definitely want to take memory-saving measures, hence my original suggestion

I have actually used it as a workstation, and it has actually been usable. Though the upgrade to 1GB was very much due to a slow Gnome. I wouldn't suggest playing games on it or anything like that, and pirut crushes the processor. However, it works fine for my needs - and I don't usually have the GUI running (though it is installed in a disabled state for various reasons). Realistically speaking, the OP has enough hard drive space to install everything. From there they can just pull out/replace applications that bog down the system too much. the "top" command is your friend here.

My point here is that you can indeed trim your desktop down so you don't have the latest and greatest of everything on it. If Nautilus won't run, use the Gnome Commander, If Metacity eats too much RAM, use Fluxbox and so on. When you get down to it, there is no need to install a "small" distribution because Linux is Linux and you can strip out whatever you don't need or can't run from any distro. Using Fedora, you'd have a very good desktop with less fudging around with it (by simply removing packages).

As a personal system, I could very easily use my DC as a personal system if I wanted to, but I don't play graphically intense games or graphic design. All I do is administer servers and write code, for which a 386 would be usable if it were required (most servers are strictly CLI anyway). Those specs though will allow him to actually run Gnome, Firefox, Thunderbird and Abiword - and perhaps even OpenOffice with little frustration.

This is my actual desktop on that system, just to show that it works.

yea. i guess here it would really depend on the OPs comfort level with linux and how much "extra work" he/she wanted to put into it. but now you've got me curious.. oddly enough i also have a 450MHz P3 with 384MB of ram so i think i'm going to experiment with it.. lol altho maybe not bc i'd have to add a dvd player to it or download the fc6 cds =\



/* hahah..nice DP ;]
but i was never doubting you. u g0tz sk1llz..
it just doesn't seem to me like itd be very useable as a stripped down win2k didn't run all that great.
but i'll bite, i'll give it a try..
*/

All you need is the first two, just don't select any packages during installation (uncheck Productivity and select "Customize Later").

btw - good to see you again,

mm..good to know (about the first 2 disks).
thanks :] i would have to say the same.
the college has been keeping me busy :[

On a separate tangent from what your talking about, I've used Puppy linux on a Pentium 166 mhz with 384mb ram and it worked pretty well, I had it running from a live cd then just put it on the hd because I wanted it to be permenent. The GUI on Puppy linux is not so pretty but it may be the only choice with system specs like that.

lol yeaa 166 is pretty low.. i've seen quite a few screenys tho of puppy setups that had some pizazz to them.
you'd just have to modify it a bit :] lol

onboard graphics tho?

this: how would you go about replacing metacity with fluxbox? is it similar to openbox --replace ? or would you have to setup a config file telling it to run gnome-panel and nautilus with fluxbox?

i allready looked at it. the download i used was a bad link. it also didnt recommend anything that would run all to well on my system

and this312 i cant stand fluxbox or metacity. i only like KDE or GNOME

ill have to get used to it tho with this POS computer. im downloading DSL now

and yes this a personal use only comp. nothin but listening to music, web browsing, and IMing. with a littlebit of wordprocessor thrown occasionally.

hahah that's funny. not to make you feel bad, but..
metacity is GNOMEs window manager. so you just said you dont and do like it all in the same statement. lol

but this is right, i installed FC5 (bc my FC6 disk wouldn't boot) and it works well enough to use. and he's not saying to use fluxbox without gnome, he's saying to use fluxbox in place of metacity with the rest being taken care of by the gnome defaults. did you look at his screenshot?

lol i wis thinking of x desktop not metacity. i was tired and rushed so i didnt look at the ss could i get a link to fedora 5 please. if you have it ofcourse. or if you have a torrent file that would be good