Recs for a multi-pentium server

[bugsysiegel]

Looking for recommendations on a distro to revive an old HP web server I've had laying around for about five years.

I have four Pentium chips that will be driving it, 32MB of ram, and a 40GB drive. No plans on using it for anything in particular, just want to see if I can beat it into submission.

Your thoughts?

 

[Netopia]

I would go with a server setup, and no GUI for sure!

Debian or BSD might be likely candidates. But you really don't have much RAM there!

Joe

 

[Nothinman]

32M of memory is a little anemic. You should be able to squeeze any distro in there but they won't perform well and some will require a lot of hackery. I'd personally go with Debian.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I'd probably go with slackware, but I will admit I'm a bit of a slackware fanboy ....
I really prefer OpenBSD, but there's no guarantee that you'd get all 4 CPU's workin with it.


That said ... Debian should install fine and will probably give you less trouble and be easier to keep up to date ....

 

[bugsysiegel]

Cool, thanks for the heads up!

Think I should try and get an older distro, or should a new one be alright since they are old cpu's, but they are still Pentiums?

I'll see what eBay has to say about some more ram.

Thanks again!

 

[skyking]

Ask over on fs/ft for that ram. you may get it donated to you for the price of postage. Put in a request over on the freebies thread for it too. LMK what you need, I may have it also.
< gathers old crap, and remembers my first gateway machine with 32mb of ram🙂>

 

[BurnItDwn]

Originally posted by: bugsysiegel
Cool, thanks for the heads up!

Think I should try and get an older distro, or should a new one be alright since they are old cpu's, but they are still Pentiums?

I'll see what eBay has to say about some more ram.

Thanks again!

Honestly you're better off with a modern distro with minimal bloat. That way it should be easier to stay caught up with security updates.
40GB of space is plenty of room.
if you don't run any GUI, you'll probably be fine.

If you try to run Gnome or KDE it simply won't work. Just like how you can't run XP on 32mb of ram.

 

[jhu]

what are the specs for the machine? didn't know hp made quad processor pentium machines. anyway, i'd use debian with no gui

 

[Netopia]

I would think it is probably a Pentium Pro setup.

Joe