Here's a challenge, distro for this OLD PC...

[RyanGreener]

Went into my basement and found this old rig I had built. Intel Celeron 567 MHZ, 384 MB RAM, some nVidia card I can't remember. DAMN this thing is slow. Tried hooking it up to an old CRT and I did a fresh install of an nLited XP onto it, with everything I could do, and this thing is terrible. Is there a Linux distro I should try to attempt to make this thing useful? Has to be relatively easy to use, but I'm not a complete newbie to Linux..

Thanks for recommendations 🙂

 

[Nothinman]

All of them run the same software in the end so as long as you try the right desktop environment any of them will be fine. Personally, I'd go with Debian or Ubuntu.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux (DSL) would be my recommendation. See sig for info.

 

[VinDSL]

Puppy Linux FTW!

 

[RyanGreener]

I'll try it soon. Tried installing via USB but I think this motherboard can't even boot from USB, lol. Gonna burn a CD soon. Puppy Linux looks promising

 

[lxskllr]

DSL will be the absolute fastest, but Puppy gives a nicer experience considering it's light weight.

 

[bobross419]

to make this thing useful?

Have you considered using it as a firewall? You wouldn't need a DE or WM at all for that, just straight command line. It shouldn't take up much in the way of resources, just grab an extra NIC and away you go.

 

[RyanGreener]

Have you considered using it as a firewall? You wouldn't need a DE or WM at all for that, just straight command line. It shouldn't take up much in the way of resources, just grab an extra NIC and away you go.

Well, I never thought of that, mainly because I don't have knowledge in networking related stuff. I also have a "built in" firewall in my Asus Router I have.

 

[gychang]

Slitaz looks modern and your machine is certainly fast enough IMHO.

gychang

 

[RyanGreener]

Slitaz....another good candidate. I'm going to try the following in this order:

Puppy Linux
Lubuntu
Slitaz

 

[VinDSL]

Slitaz....another good candidate. I'm going to try the following in this order:

Puppy Linux
Lubuntu
Slitaz

Good! As a matter of common decency...

I could tell you which one will be permanently adopted, but...

Where's the fun in that?!?!? :sneaky:

 

[joetekubi]

I'm a big fan of Debian based distros (apt-get rulez!), and the lightest full-featured distro I've found is AntiX, which acutally runs ok in 128M. On you box, you can probably run it's big brother, Mepis.

 

[RyanGreener]

Hmm, I really hope that Linux makes this old junkbox useful. It just amazes me that on an nLited install of Windows XP it still runs terrible....will be trying this soon.

 

[Nothinman]

Hmm, I really hope that Linux makes this old junkbox useful. It just amazes me that on an nLited install of Windows XP it still runs terrible....will be trying this soon.

The OS isn't the issue, at least not entirely, it's the software you're running on top of it. And with 384M of memory you won't be able to do much at once from a desktop standpoint. I.e FF is going to hog just as much memory in Linux as it would in Windows.

 

[VinDSL]

The OS isn't the issue, at least not entirely, it's the software you're running on top of it.[...]

True! And, that's the beauty of the Puppy package.

And with 384M of memory you won't be able to do much at once from a desktop standpoint.[...]

I'm currently running Puppy on 3 (otherwise useless) doorstops. If it wasn't for Puppy, they would be sitting in my garage, next to the lawnmower, covered in grass clippings and cobwebs. :awe:

384MB would be a luxury on a Puppy machine!

My doorstops have: 32MB, 64MB, and 160MB (the brute of the bunch) respectively.

Doing some quick math -- combined -- they have a total of 256MB RAM. 😱

I would be living in hog heaven if they each had 384MB!

 

[Nothinman]

So what magic does Puppy perform to make FF usable on a 32M machine?

 

[VinDSL]

So what magic does Puppy perform to make FF usable on a 32M machine?

Heh! I assume you mean Firefox.

BTW, Mozilla prefers that you use Fx or fx, not FF... ()🙂

Look, let's put a face on Puppy. I'm on my 160MB Puppy brute right now.

Here's the machine - a pristine 10 year-old eMachine etower:

Here's a snappie of the desktop:

Obviously, Fx would kill the performance on this machine, but SeaMonkey runs just fine!

You can see the specs on this machine in the snappie. What you can't see is...

It has 160MB RAM. It's running in 1280x1024x24 res. And, it's perfectly usable.

384MB would make this a wet dream! 😀

 

[Nothinman]

Heh! I assume you mean Firefox.

BTW, Mozilla prefers that you use Fx or fx, not FF... ()🙂

Look, let's put a face on Puppy. I'm on my 160MB Puppy brute right now.

Here's the machine - a pristine 10 year-old eMachine etower:

Here's a snappie of the desktop:

Obviously, Fx would kill the performance on this machine, but SeaMonkey runs just fine!

You can see the specs on this machine in the snappie. What you can't see is...

It has 160MB RAM. It's running in 1280x1024x24 res. And, it's perfectly usable.

384MB would make this a wet dream! 😀

I can't say I'm too concerned with what the Mozilla corporation wants me to call their browser, they chose the name Firefox and the initials of that will always be FF to me. Fx is a channel (is it still around?), not a web browser.

How much memory is SeaMonkey using for that one tab? I wouldn't really call running 1 browser window with only 1 tab "perfectly usable".

 

[VinDSL]

Fx is a channel (is it still around?)[...]

LoL! I wouldn't know.

I own a television, but I seldom watch it. Really!

I don't have the time or patience to watch TV.

How much memory is SeaMonkey using for that one tab? I wouldn't really call running 1 browser window with only 1 tab "perfectly usable".

I dunno. I'm back on my P4 Extreme Edition box.

I just cranked up the "brute" to show what Puppy looks like.

Sometimes, ppl will load an old version of Puppy from a LiveCD and judge it poorly.

Believe me on this. That eMachine is totally unusable with anything other than Puppy Linux.

I tried many, many, different flavors of Linux (on the eMachine) and Puppy was the only one that would boot, after a HD install. All the rest gave me a black screen on boot.

Anyway, let's see what the OP chooses. My money is on Puppy, but we'll see...

 

[RyanGreener]

Hahaha...with 384MB I feel all powerful 😛

How's hardware detection on PuppyLinux?

EDIT: Since I'm trying Puppy first, will it be easier for me to do a Frugal or Full Install? I have a 40 GB HD, so space is not a concern because this desktop will just be a web browser/word processor thingy, and not used for anything else.

 

[VinDSL]

Hahaha...with 384MB I feel all powerful 😛

How's hardware detection on PuppyLinux?

EDIT: Since I'm trying Puppy first, will it be easier for me to do a Frugal or Full Install?

Hardware detection has been great, in the past!

The reason my adopted/donated etower wouldn't boot with other distros was because eMachines use a lot of proprietary hardware, and it goofs up the installers. The Puppy installer discovered it all - except for the weirdo ethernet card (that I'm sure the previous owner added).

I would do a full install. Actually... if it was me, I'd install Puppy 5.0 aka "Lucid Puppy".

Puppy 5 is built from Ubuntu 10.04 binaries. Sounds right up my alley! :sneaky:

Puppy 4 works great, but it's starting to show its age...

 

[joetekubi]

When I was recently exploring low-memory distros for my old IBM T41 (P3 with 128MB ram), I tested a lot of candidates. It was really hit-or-miss it seemed.
Some wouldn't boot, some wouldn't run X, some the mouse was bad.
It seems a fact of life that the robust hardware detection and initialization that Knoppix or Ubuntu use can't really be done in a low memory distro.

So my advice, try a couple and see what works for you.
Arguing over how much memory a particular browser uses is not adding value.
-joe

 

[VinDSL]

When I was recently exploring low-memory distros for my old IBM T41 (P3 with 128MB ram), I tested a lot of candidates. It was really hit-or-miss it seemed.[...]

So my advice, try a couple and see what works for you.[...]

True that!

UPDATE

I decided to upgrade (MyBrute :awe🙂 to "Lucid Puppy" 5.0.1

After playing with it for a few hours...

Puppy 5 is a wash on my eMachine. Apparently, 5.0 has a problem with Intel chipsets, e.g. doesn't recognize i810/Intel video chipsets, even if you manually load/config the drivers.

I tried a couple of 'premium' PCI cards (no AGP bus on the etower).

I tried a (formerly) high-dollar Matrox Millennium (MGA chipset). No dice!

Then, I tried a Maxi Gamer Phoenix (Voodoo Banshee chipset). Fail!

Three strikes (and you're out)!

Soooo... I can't recommend Puppy Linux 5.0.1 at this juncture, based on this experience. I would stick with Puppy Linux 4.3.1 in the present, on dinosaurs.

DIGRESSION

I never heard of antiX before this dicussion. Looks interesting!

I'm downloading the antiX-M8.5 'Marek Edelman' ISO, as I type.

I'll let you know how it works out... or not. :sneaky:

 

[RyanGreener]

Hmmm, it's ok if Puppy doesn't work, I've still got two other options so far, and AFAIK, as long as the distro is lighter than XP (which can't be too hard to achieve) and uses lightweight software, I'll be fine.

 

[VinDSL]

Hmmm, it's ok if Puppy doesn't work, I've still got two other options[...]

Hold on...

I'll be damned! I got it working on my brute... 😱

MY problem is...

The i810 chipset (actually a subset) is so old that it has been deprecated and taken out of the archives.

The way I 'fixed' the problem was by telling "Lucid Puppy" to not load DRI in the XORG config file.

Heh! Gotta love it! :sneaky:

BTW, I tried antiX on two different machines and couldn't get it to load.

On this machine, it wouldn't even boot the LiveCD.

On a more modern machine, everything was fine until I got to the desktop, and it borked the display.

Latez! I'm gonna go play with Puppy 5.0.1.