what OS for a really old computer?

[JonnyBalls]

My friend just gave me a Pentium 133 Mhz machine with a 1.2 gig HDD...
i want to use it as as ftp server, does anyone have any suggestions on what i can put on it that won't be horribly slow?
i was thinking an old version of red hat?
any suggestions?

 

[reicherb]

Even the newest Redhat, or even better a flavor of BSD will work well on that machine.

 

[nihil]

I'm gonna have to go with open bsd. I'm assuming that you're somewhat familiar with *nix, but if you're not, now is a great time to learn.

 

[TheOmegaCode]

I'm gonna have to go with free bsd. I'm assuming that you're somewhat familiar with *nix, but if you're not, now is a great time to learn.



When it comes to a server, I think BSD's are nicer. To me, they seem a bit more organized and professional. They are also simple, and kept up by BSD.

 

[Chooco]

does BSD have different commands than Linux? they are both very similar aren't they?
the latest version of FreeBSD i saw was 3 CDs big..... try IcePack Linux, it's like 300mb fully loaded.

 

[Goosemaster]

What would be the main difference i would see from a Linux distro...I am Now trying out Mandrake 8.2 as I have tried Redhat 7.3 and Suse 7.3 and felt them to be "lacking"

Mandrake seems like it has easily accessable server feautures....as did Redhat

your take...?

 

[Chooco]

the deciding vote for me was that Mandrake 8.0 would have internet SOMETIMES but Redhat 7.1 and 7.2 never did (i don't know why). there is only 1 place to download Redhat 7.3 and the max i could get in terms of speed was about 7kB/s, Mandrake 8.2 has tons of mirrors and i downloaded in aobut 2 and a half hours at 80kB/s for each of the 2 CDs (not including support CD)

did anybody here actually DL RedHat 7.3? it takes like a full week because they don't have any mirror sites.

 

[TheOmegaCode]

you don't have to download all 3 cd's of FreeBSD. I only have all of them because my friend wanted them. I just install 4.5 then cvsupit the the 4.0 stable tree. And most of the progs I use I get from the ports collection...

 

[Goosemaster]

I got Redhat 7.3 @ about 400KB/s

 

[Goosemaster]

Last night I got mandrake @1.8MB per second


You heard me.

 

[crisp82]

Impressive!

 

[Chooco]

damn it this sucks, i got Mandrake 8.2 and it is fully compatible with my ethernet card but it did a bad burn job on the second CD and KDE won't boot and i can't reburn it on that computer because i accidently deleted the partitions!!!

feel my pain

 

[JonnyBalls]

Originally posted by: reicherb
Even the newest Redhat, or even better a flavor of BSD will work well on that machine.

Actually, yes i am very familiar with *nix...
i installed mandrake 8.2 on it last night...
the computer is way too slow to hangle it... it took hours and hours to do a simple install.

after the install... it took about 15 minutes to simply boot,
then the panel crashed when it finally did.
I need something that can be a fast FTP, on a really slow machine, perhaps a flavor of BSD is the way to go, i have not had any experience with that before, but i'm willing to learn...

any suggestions?