locking for the best OS for my old crapy pc's

[uKEN]

Hay well I have a few realy crapy pc:

GatWay lap top.. 1200mh, 512mb ram
Dell desk top.. p4, 256mb ram

Will thay run beader under puppy or Lbuntu or what
any sugestions would be great

[TeoBigusGeekus]

Lubuntu will be perfect for them.
If you feel adventurous, you could try an Arch linux installation with openbox as you DE.

[Bachstelze]

I wish people would stop saying over 1 GHz with 512 MB of RAM is "crappy". Hell, you can run Ubuntu on that, just disable RAM-heavy things like Compiz and maybe Firefox. When you're on 400 MHz with 128 MB of RAM you're talking crappy.

[Chimes]

Puppy, TinyCore, CrunchBang, Zenwalk, and Vector are going to be ones that people redirect you too. They will all run entirely fine on the specs you're talking about. In fact, you will swear you've never seen a computer go so fast from powered off to desktop in your life. I've run linux on a computer with 350 mhz and 58 mb ram. I am not kidding. This laptop was half as old as I was when I got it. PDFs took a while, and I never even tried video, but checking e-mail and editing documents (abiword was fastest) went as fine as one could want.

Anyway, I encourage you to try these non-ubuntu OSes: you will definitely learn new things about taking care of a linux systems.

However, a warning. The reason this is true is because these Operating Systems have not been designed (nor had enough developers and a big enough support community) to be encapsulatingly easy to use. So for example, normally the point-and-click installer modules will work, the software will work, etc. But at some point, you will probably run into some showstopper package that doesn't work, or isn't prepared for your OS, or some kind of bug you didn't expect.

Now, if you're ready to pull up your sleeves and do some really scary stuff (like type "configure" and "make" and then "make install" on a command line to install software manually ) you can usually fix most of these problems easily. It just takes a little learning if you're not well acquainted with the command line and the filesystem structure and operation of a linux system. So for example, when someone asks me how to start learning more about linux than they already know, I suggest O'Reilly's linux pocket guide and one of these barebone systems.

Now, the benefit of ubuntu is its easy. Apt-get takes care of everything package related, because there are all these people making sure there are no problems on the distribution level. It does often come with a lot of stuff you may not want right now (don't use bluetooth, for example?), but it will do the job. It is this ease of installing packages (and my constant need to do it) which is why I use ubuntu with enlightenment on my main system (2.0 gHz with enlightenment desktop = wicked fast. I don't remember the last time I waited for something to open.) I also uninstall a lot of programs I don't need, and prevent several services from beginning at startup. It maintains the simplicity and speed I am looking for.

But for example, on a server you very, very rarely have to install new packages. So for example, if these boxes are just going to be simple servers, say like, a jukebox for playing music (I know small servers is often a good use for old computers), ease of rapid anytime package-installation wouldn't come under consideration.

edit: btw the laptop was from 1997 or 98, I believe, so it was like 12 years old when I got it. I still have it in storage with a couple other keepsakes.

[el_koraco]

Will thay run beader under puppy or Lbuntu or what
any sugestions would be great

Lubuntu, Xubuntu, hell, you can even run Ubuntu on it if you use Metacity instead of Compiz. Or choose one of the lighter distros. Openbox can run on 40 MB if you do a Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, grml2hd or Debian netinstall, and there's a bunch of even lighter window managers. JVM (Puppy Linux uses it) goes beyond 40 MB and you get a panel and stuff. Any tiler will run on the Force alone.

It's mostly the apps that will test the ram. I'd say go with CLI apps as much as you can - mutt for email, mc for file management, irssi/centerim/mcabber for IM and IRC, MOC, cmus or mpd for music, mplayer for video, rtorrent for torrenting, and leave the RAM for a browser. You can even trim down there, Midori is a fully featured browser that hardly ever eats more than 150 MB. It's even gonna be fun, I got 2 gigs of RAM, and only use Firefox and office software from the graphical apps.

[ilovelinux33467]

You could try out FreeBSD and install a light window manager like icewm from the ports. Or even NetBSD.

[LowSky]

About Arch, make sure the processor is i686 compatible. Many of those older chips under the 1.5Ghz ranges can be i586 and not compatible with Arch. This is part of the reason many OSes are still written for 386 and 486 processors, so old PC's can still run.

[Tibuda]

do you want to lock an os? I suggest this:

[walt.smith1960]

Another option for less powerful machines might be PCLinuxOS. I have a ThinkPad R31 which is a 2002ish PIII w/ 512 Mb. RAM. For whatever reason, Ubuntu and Lubuntu 11.04 would not install. I think it might be due to a deprecated video driver though I'm not sure. Ubuntu 10.10 would install and run, 11.04 would not. I was curious about PCLinux OS so downloaded and burned a CD. It installs and runs quite well. There are a differences compared to *buntu but nothing dramatic.

[sidzen]

Swift Linux Regular is based on antiX-M11, but even lighter -- it's a true Debian-based distro, as is my second recommendation, CrunchBang-i486

Also, see this review of Light Distros -- dated (e.g. #! "Statler" is now Debian, not ubuntu-based) but good

Best wishes, from an 'old PC performance junkie' !