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Linux for old AMD K6-II 500?

M

mjavid

Member
Hi All!
I have an old AMD K6-II 500 rig (40 GB HDD, dedicated Nvidia 64MB graphics card, 256 MB RAM).
It will connect to the internet using a USB wireless adapter.
I would like to give this to my small kids to use for web-browsing and online games/movies.
What Linux distro should I use?


Thanks in advance,
 
Jodell88 said:
Lubuntu will use that just fine. I have it running on a box with 256 of memory right now.
Click to expand...

Lubuntu itself will run fine, but on a box dedicated to consuming online content, it won't take long before performance starts declining due to excessive paging. Even on a light distro, I wouldn't expect reasonable performance out of modern full-featured web browsers using anything less than 512MB. Hell, Chrome is using 250MB of RAM right now, and I only have a single tab open (...on Windows, but still 😛)
 
theevilsharpie said:
Lubuntu itself will run fine, but on a box dedicated to consuming online content, it won't take long before performance starts declining due to excessive paging. Even on a light distro, I wouldn't expect reasonable performance out of modern full-featured web browsers using anything less than 512MB. Hell, Chrome is using 250MB of RAM right now, and I only have a single tab open (...on Windows, but still 😛)
Click to expand...

I'm of this opinion also. 256mb is fine for a basic computer, but the modern web is a bloated pig. If you don't want to upgrade, I'd run a small/micro distro. Puppy gives a nice visual appearance for kids; it's "cute". For something even smaller, but less cute, SliTaz and TinyCore would maximize your ram.

Personally, I'd start with Puppy, use Midori as the browser, and see how it goes.
 
Flash games are going to be the biggest problem with the RAM. The fact is, programmers don't care anymore about memory usage because memory is so cheap (for modern platforms) that everyone has more memory than they can typically use.
 
Fallen Kell said:
Flash games are going to be the biggest problem with the RAM. The fact is, programmers don't care anymore about memory usage because memory is so cheap (for modern platforms) that everyone has more memory than they can typically use.
Click to expand...

This. I had to stop using my netbook because Flash was raping the Atom N270 processor. That was with 1GB of RAM and Ubuntu Netbook Remix (never tried Unity)

Because most web sites and games use Flash or Ajax, it is going to be brutal for that system. Hey there is always runlevel 3 and ELinks 😛

As for light distros, there is SliTaz and Puppy. If you go the DOS route, I always liked Lynx.
 
you can use any of the lighter browsers (dillo, links2, midori, heck even properly configured firefox will do), there are plenty, also switch from kde/gnome to fluxbox or something similarly light, that way 256M of ram would be plenty. also, you can try building your own linux from scratch 🙂
 
jaydee said:
Peppermint is suppose to be good for stuff like this.
Click to expand...
Speak of the devil... that's what I'm on right now... Peppermint Two OS.

Anyway, for a machine with limited resources, I'm a big believer in Puppy. Many times, Puppy is the only thing that will run on my doorstop computers.

Specifically, I would recommend Macpup Opera 2.0. I've had great luck with it.

Check out this "top" of Macpup...

macpup-top.png

Ancient e-Machine tower with 192MB RAM, Celeron, 5GB HD, onboard graphic chipset, et cetera.

LoL! 3% CPU usage, sitting idle at the desktop, and 88MB free RAM.

I'd like to see another OS match/beat that! 😀

LINKAGE: http://macpup.org/opera2.php

Oh, BTW, did I mention it has Enlightenment e17 WM by default?!?!?!?
 
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I've found Arch works very well on older hardware. Try IceWM, Fluxbox, or Openbox for the most speed, though be aware that XCompMgr and other compositors don't work well on IceWM.

The problems will appear when you try to use the 'net honestly. As mentioned upthread, Midori ("green") and Kazehakase (roughly "Professor Wind" I think...) are much lighter than Firefox. Flash will bring this machine to its knees unfortunately.

If you'd like Windows-looking themes, I've actually made some at box-look.org under the name Hazuki.
 
Ha Vin promoting peppermint, was wondering when I started reading this thread if he would pipe in. Honestly. Like peppermint a lot as well, so i second that, but also second the puppy suggestion IF you can get the wireless to work consistenly.

Incidentally Vin, what's the proc clock speed on that beast?
 
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Paperlantern said:
Incidentally Vin, what's the proc clock speed on that beast?
Click to expand...
Heh! 667MHz (still has the original stickers on the case - no kidding).

It's an "etower 667ix". A friend donated it to my collection. Came with Windows ME.

I *think* the REAL speed is 666, but Intel marketed it as 667MHz, for obvious reasons. 😀

I installed many, many distros. Puppy/Macpup were the only ones that booted from the HD.
 
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