Please Suggest Linux OS To Install

[s.fox]

Hi,

I am faced with a conundrum of what Linux OS to install on a collection of really old hardware I cobbled together from a box that I found in my garage.

Concerning Specifications
------------------------------

Intel Celeron 1.7 GHZ Processor
384MB RAM



Given the specifications of the processor and RAM I was thinking about installing something lightweight like puppy linux. I was wondering what the community could suggest, or even advise me against installing puppy.

Thanks for any input

-Ash R

N.B Please note that this is just a path for me to learn something about light weight Linux OS's and I do not intend to use the machine for any serious work.

[DeadSuperHero]

I would recommend Slitaz. I don't remember how small it is, but it's really lightweight. Might be worth a shot.

By the way, I love your avatar.

[Greg]

I second SliTaz. It's lightweight, and has an innovative package manager/build service. It should run nicely on that machine.

[dragos240]

What about arch? Maybe? Well.... If it is i686

[.Maleficus.]

Arch. Lightweight, fast, best package manager (IMO), easy to install/configure. They have an awesome wiki if you run into problems and the Beginner's Guide makes installation super easy.

Otherwise, Gentoo, if you don't mind compiling. On that machine though, I don't think you'd want to, so I'd stick to Arch.

[Mehall]

Crunchbang will fit nicely on that. A smidgen slow if you run Firefox, but Opera would be great. If it has to be only FOSS, then use Chromium or something.

[Random-penguin]

You could try Xubuntu :) It Works good on my EeePc!

[dragos240]

You could try Xubuntu :) It Works good on my EeePc!

That's not so light anymore, jaunty really loaded it.

[bryonak]

I think your hardware is way too highend for Puppy or DamnSmall... I'm going to install the latter on a 144MHz 64MB RAM system soon ;)

I'd recommend CrunchBang (crunchbanglinux.org), a quite young yet very popular lightweight distro based on Ubuntu. It runs snappily on a Pentium3 (700Mhz) with 192MB RAM, so I think your system would be all right with it. Plus you get the whole Ubuntu repositories to install additional software.

[MaxIBoy]

I think your hardware is way too highend for Puppy or DamnSmall... I'm going to install the latter on a 144MHz 64MB RAM system soon ;)

I'd recommend CrunchBang (http://crunchbanglinux.org), a quite young yet very popular lightweight distro based on Ubuntu. It runs snappily on a Pentium3 (700Mhz) with 192MB RAM, so I think your system would be all right with it. Plus you get the whole Ubuntu repositories to install additional software.
Realize that CrunchBang == Ubuntu with a lighter window manager.

Try a Debian net-install CD without any packages selected.

Then run "apt-get install lxde" and you're all set.

[tom66]

I had ancient hardware (1.0 GHz Pentium III, 256 MB RAM, 40.0 GB HDD) and vanilla Ubuntu ran fine on it (slower than on other PCs, but still quite fast). Xubuntu was even better.

[BGFG]

I'd say Crunchbang, SliTaz or a Minimal install with LXDE. Use this for a minimal install:

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/minimal

and have fun man...

[Sylslay]

Whay not tray Xubuntu, with that desktop should run ok,
PS. I use full Ubuntu 9.04 with ext4 on p4 1.3 with 512kb cache and 512ram,
it work quite fast, firefox start in 3sec, and openofice in fiew sec more.
I upgrate last time to 2GB of RAM, and don't see much diffrence since I run on 512MB ram. Becouse my system use (general) only between 200 and 300MB RAM.
PS. But some time ago I run Knopix with Xface desktop from live Cd, and it run faster than Gnome desktop. So, Xface is lighter than Gnome on old machine.