What version of Linux to run on a slow machine

[Thebareone]

I have a 200MHZ with 16M of ram and wanted to put linux on it. I tried Red-hat8 but it ran way too slow. Can anybody suggest what i could put on this machine and still have it run pretty speedy? I want to use it as a workstation for spreadsheets, word proccesssing and other office stuff. I would like a GUI as im still learning the ropes of Linux. I even bought a book so now im really commited. Im open to any suggestions!!!

Thanks for any help!

 

[Mucman]

Don't run KDE or Gnome as your window manager, that's for sure! Try out blackbox, it's very slick... Not sure how XFree86 runs with 16M of RAM though.

As for which distro, I have no idea. The only distro I've really spent time with is Debian, otherwise I am a FreeBSD man.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Upgrade the RAM, avoid KDE/Gnome, and go minimalistic. 200mhz isnt really slow...

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

I have to agree, if you can upgrade the RAM to around 64mb, you'll see an amazing difference in any version of Linux. 128mb is what a friend of mine runs with RedHat 8.0, and it's very responsive. FWIW, he has a 133mhz processor, which doesn't seem to be an issue at all...

 

[TheOmegaCode]

I have a feeling you're judging Linux by the GUI. Any distro would probably do (minimal install though), and stick with a light window manager, as others have suggested. Look into WindowMaker or a BlackBox variant. Also, the RAM upgrade is more or less, essential if you want to have nice GUI to work with.

 

[Thebareone]

I upgraded the ram to 64megs but it's still way to slow to be used as a workstation. Im trying to get blackbox to work but i can't seem to get it to boot into blackbox. I downloaded the files off the blackbox website, uncompressed them and followed the how-to and read me. First I went to a terminal and ran configure, then make, make install, and clean. Do i somehow have to shutdown Gnome and go to a command prompt then run black box? If so how do i do that? Im going to try it again in case i missed somthing, but i followed the instal instructions to the letter. Do i need to uncompress the file into a specific directory before running the config comand?

 

[TheOmegaCode]

You probably need to open up your ~/.xinitrc, comment gnome out, and then add the line "blackbox" (w/out quotes of course).

 

[lowtech1]

There are many minimal distro that you can try, but I ahve tried Debain 2.2 on a dual Pentium Pro 200 with 64 megs of ram & it could do in a pinch with Oracle 7.

I haven't try as low as 16megs of ram, but running minimal Debain 2.2 with a 486 66mhz with 32 megs of ram works great as a desktop (no X).

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: lowtech
There are many minimal distro that you can try, but I ahve tried Debain 2.2 on a dual Pentium Pro 200 with 64 megs of ram & it could do in a pinch with Oracle 7.

I haven't try as low as 16megs of ram, but running minimal Debain 2.2 with a 486 66mhz with 32 megs of ram works great as a desktop (no X).

OpenBSD isnt too bad on a sparcstation 10 with a 33mhz processor. I havent tried X though, I would if I have more than 32mB of ram.

 

[Abzstrak]

it would take alittle while to install, but I would use gentoo... use a stage3 tarball to avoid the 2 days or so in base system compiling on that system. You should be able to have the base install done in 1.5 hours or so (considering the hour or so for the kernel compile). Then you can install blackbox or whatever by simply typing emerge blackbox and it'll download and compile everything needed... compiling X on her should take 12 hours or more, but not a big deal since you only do it once.

I have gentoo running on a P233MMX thats overclocked to 263MHz with 128 MB ram... its running as my file/ftp/irc server and runs very well... I dont have a gui installed on it, but I would expect blackbox/fluxbox/waimea to run very well. Your harddrive speed may be an issue as well, I dont have the proble since I added a udma66 card and an 80gb drive.

The primary issue with keeping your system fast is to not have a bunch of crap running in the background. Gentoo would only run the things you install (so only what you need). It would also teach you a good amount about some of the workings of linux by just installing it, actually it should be a VERY good learning experience for you, and I would recommend it on that aspect alone since this is your goal.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: Abzstrak
it would take alittle while to install, but I would use gentoo... use a stage3 tarball to avoid the 2 days or so in base system compiling on that system. You should be able to have the base install done in 1.5 hours or so (considering the hour or so for the kernel compile). Then you can install blackbox or whatever by simply typing emerge blackbox and it'll download and compile everything needed... compiling X on her should take 12 hours or more, but not a big deal since you only do it once.

I have gentoo running on a P233MMX thats overclocked to 263MHz with 128 MB ram... its running as my file/ftp/irc server and runs very well... I dont have a gui installed on it, but I would expect blackbox/fluxbox/waimea to run very well. Your harddrive speed may be an issue as well, I dont have the proble since I added a udma66 card and an 80gb drive.

The primary issue with keeping your system fast is to not have a bunch of crap running in the background. Gentoo would only run the things you install (so only what you need). It would also teach you a good amount about some of the workings of linux by just installing it, actually it should be a VERY good learning experience for you, and I would recommend it on that aspect alone since this is your goal.

I concur.