Best Linux for an old machine?

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ehume
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Best Linux for an old machine?

Post by ehume »

I'm retiring my 6-year-old 266MHz P2 from Windows work. It has 192MB SDRAM and 20GB in 2 HD's. The video card is a Matrox Millenium II with its own VRAM, and the sound card is by Creative. The machine is not shabby, but it can no longer run the 1-2 year old games my daughter is buying on the discount racks. So it's going to get a low-level reformat and a new OS. Time to try Linux, I think. But which distro?

Based on a pm exchange with another user here, I've decided not to try Mandrake. But this leaves Red Hat, SuSe, and a bunch of smaller distros. So, which one for an old, slow machine? I am aware that there might be issues with Linux drivers for old hardware, which is why my question is fairly specific for the older machine.

Any thoughts?
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David James
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Post by David James »

I use Debian on my mid-range box with a GUI and all, but I've also got a P200 w/ 40Mb RAM configured as a server running Debian in GUI-less environment. Debian is probably one of the few dists in which one can still run it without a GUI, if that's something you're interested in. It also tends to be very backwards compatible hardware wise.

With the hardware on your box you could probably run a decent workstation. It's borderline in terms of Mozilla though - it's got enough RAM but lacks a bit in terms of processor power - just don't run Mozilla with too many other things.
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Post by GNU/Ben »

I'd say RH, for 2 reasons:
It's easy
It's got good driver support (I think)
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DJGM
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Post by DJGM »

Benman wrote:I'd say RH, for 2 reasons:
It's easy
It's got good driver support (I think)


I'd say SuSE for those very same reasons. SuSE defaults to the KDE3.x desktop, while RedHat
defaults to the GNOME2.x desktop. KDE has a very much Windows like look and feel to it, so is
almost perfect for those suffering Win32 withdrawal symptoms! Meanwhile, GNOME looks and
feels more like it has a Macintosh style UI, on the SuSE distro, while the RedHat developers
have tried to make their versions of KDE and GNOME look as near to identical as possible.

My personal preference to Linux distros is SuSE, while KDE is my preferred Linux desktop.

It's entirely up to you which one you settle on. As you're going to be using this older PC as a
secondary machine, try as many Linux distros as you can, and see which works best for you,
before settling on anyone particular distro. Try the "big three" (SuSE, RedHat and Mandrake)
before those that AFAIK aren't primarily aimed at end-users, such as Debian and Slackware.
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Post by wheerdam »

With 192MB, I don't think your machine will hold if you work intensively with it and you decide to use KDE or Gnome. KDE and Gnome use a lot of RAM, I would go with the *box if you're going to use the box frequently in Linux. But if you just use it for fun, KDE or Gnome should be alright. :)

I won't recommend Gentoo though, Installing Gentoo on a PII can take ages :twisted: , unless you compile the system on different computer and transfer it to your old computer, that is.
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ehume
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Post by ehume »

Thanks for the replies so far. Re-Windows withdrawal: I've been using microcomputers since 1982 (Apple II+). We've run Macs and machines with MS-DOS, Win 3.1-3.11 (augmented with Norton Destop for Windows), Win 95, 98, ME and XP. I won't have a problem with GUI.

But a question about Linux GUI's: is one of them getting more development?

The Win32 version of FB worked OK on that machine, so I'm hoping the Linux version won't run badly. I do note that Linux distros of FB are larger than Win32 distros. Does this mean they use more machine resources?

I've heard people saying good things about Debian and Slackware. How do they compare with RH and SuSe?
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Post by GNU/Ben »

Both KDE and GNOME are excellent. I personally prefer KDE, but some prefer GNOME.
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Post by grayrest »

KDE and GNOME get approxiamently equal mind share but GNOME seems to enjoy more corporate support while KDE is more grassroots. I prefer GNOME 2.x because it reminds me of MacOS. As for distros: I was going to recommend gentoo, as that's what I run on all my linux boxen, but it's not a good first time linux user distro and from what I've heard, neither is debian. Aren't there a couple distros that build off debian to make it easier for people to install? If so, then I'd try those. I've had problems with rpms.
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wheerdam
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Post by wheerdam »

I've never tried RPMs, but I'm happy with the mighty portage and its ebuilds minions.
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Post by hartlandcat »

I'd stay clear of SuSE. If you don't want to install both Gnome and KDE, go for KDE. If you have a 14" monitor, Gnome will not be enjoyable as it's very difficult to change the screen resolution in Gnome.

Basically, this is how I'd describe them:
KDE 3.1 ---> an aqua version of Windows XP
Gnome 2.2 ---> a classy version of MacOS 9

Also, your distro CD will most likely come with endless office suites and word processors -- you won't need to install all of these.
I'd say...
AbiWord ---> Microsoft Word
OpenOffice Writer ---> WordPerfect
Meanwhile, KWord (my personal favourite) sings away in a world of its own.
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willll
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Post by willll »

hartlandcat wrote:AbiWord ---> Microsoft Word
OpenOffice Writer ---> WordPerfect
Meanwhile, KWord (my personal favourite) sings away in a world of its own.
This comparision is extremely perplexing. I have know idea how you came up with it.
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Post by hartlandcat »

Well, AbiWord's interface is probably the most simular to MS Word. Maybe I'm the only person that thinks that OpenOffice writer is sort of like WordPerfect...
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Post by Hendikins »

hartlandcat wrote:I'd stay clear of SuSE.


Care to elaborate? I've quite happily used the 8.x series for quite a while now (currently 8.2).
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Post by sharkius »

I installed Red Hat 9 ona 450mhz, 64md sdram, 13GB harddrive system, and its run fine (I havnt used it all too much, but it's pretty good the times I have). It detected hardware better than the Mandrake 8.x distros I'v tried on it. Also ran faster.
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David James
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Post by David James »

hartlandcat wrote:Maybe I'm the only person that thinks that OpenOffice writer is sort of like WordPerfect...

Yep... no "Reveal Codes" in OpenOffice, so it can't be like WordPerfect.
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