Lightweight Distro Advice

[mistabroadway]

So since you guys have never steered me wrong I guess I'd go asking for some advice.

I have an old Pentium 3 1Ghz, 364MB RAM, 64MB Video Card, DVD drive and I'm wondering what lightweight distro to put on it. Would Xubuntu run well on this system?

[AllRadioisDead]

In before arch.

[Psumi]

So since you guys have never steered me wrong I guess I'd go asking for some advice.

I have an old Pentium 3 1Ghz, 364MB RAM, 64MB Video Card, DVD drive and I'm wondering what lightweight distro to put on it. Would Xubuntu run well on this system?

Xubuntu takes up more RAM than even Ubuntu.

[gn2]

Antix (http://antix.mepis.org/index.php/Main_Page) would be worth trying.

[prshah]

I have an old Pentium 3 1Ghz, 364MB RAM, 64MB Video Card, DVD drive

You can probably Ubuntu itself perfectly OK on this. Since your video RAM is not shared with system RAM (dedicated), you should get pretty spiffy performance off this.

[kelvin spratt]

Most Distros using openbox/LXDE use approx 60mb-80mb of ram, Arch Linux with full blown Gnome desktop 180mb, Debian is similar, Mepis lite 68mb, Ubuntu minimal install with LXDE is fairly low on ram, as is E17 80-90mb.

[mistabroadway]

Thanks for the advice! I'll give straight up Ubuntu a whirl if not I'll head for antiX or maybe Puppy Linux.:popcorn:

[roddo1966]

I've been using Mint 6 fluxbox edition on a PIII with same specs as yours and it works faultlessly and most things are pretty quick. It automatically adds new software to the menu which is great. Handy things to know are that control+m brings up the menu (there is no main menu on the taskbar), and windowskey+tab takes you back to the desktop.
As with other editions of Mint, codecs flash etc is all presetup and good to go out of the box. Saves a bit of mucking around.

[jaxxstorm]

Spri (http://www.sprilinux.com)

[RabbitWho]

Yup, i've less ram than that but otherwise a similar set up on my old PC and Spri is just... magic!

Puppy linux is amazing too, but Spri is much more user-friendly and Jaxx is always around on the Spri forums if you need some help or have a question :)

[Nerd King]

Yep I've used Spri and found it to be excellent. It's good if you're not keen to build your own from the CLI (which is quite a fun way to build your linux install on an older machine).

[Greg]

TinyCore, SliTaz for small GUI based distros.

Obligatory Crux, Debian NetInst, Arch, etc.

[cascade9]

So since you guys have never steered me wrong I guess I'd go asking for some advice.

I have an old Pentium 3 1Ghz, 364MB RAM, 64MB Video Card, DVD drive and I'm wondering what lightweight distro to put on it. Would Xubuntu run well on this system?

Xubuntu/Ubuntu works fine on the p3-866/376MB (384MB with 8MB shared for video) system. Its hardly fast, but its usable. 9.04 at the moment, havent tried 9.10 on that system. BTW, I guess that you have 384MB. (256+128, or 128+128+128). 364 is had to get without some ram being shared by video.

BTW, I dont exactly agree with Psumi ("Xubuntu uses more RAM than Ubuntu") but xubuntu isnt exactly lightweight. I find that the difference between xubuntu and ubuntu on my old p3 systems is so close its not funny...

[Psumi]

BTW, I dont exactly agree with Psumi ("Xubuntu uses more RAM than Ubuntu")

http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7520/1.html

[foldingstock]

I have an older Gateway laptop with a P3, 256MB ram, 10GB hard drive, using shared video memory (8MB). I installed Ubuntu using the alternate install CD and have fluxbox+conky running. This setup works really well and at boot only uses ~40MB(I have GDM disabled). With firefox and a few terminals open, it is using 90-100MB memory. Lighter browsers such as Seamonkey use even less memory.

This setup has worked rather well for me. Granted I don't do any intensive tasks such as real-time video editing, but for general tasks its great.

I was originally using 7.10 and have upgraded with each release. Just upgraded to 9.10 last weekend and everything is working great (after some small tweaking to fix the sound).

[kaldor]

Wolvix or Wolvix Cub; awesome and simple distro with low system requirements. XFCE, *box, and other lightweight WMs available pre-installed or in repositories. It runs like lightning from a *livecd* on a computer I tested it on with 512 MB.

Give it a try!


www.wolvix.org