linux options for a very old pc? (1 Viewer)

[plug]

so... my mac met with a tragic accident last week; dreading the call from the repair shop. in the meantime I needed an alternative so I dragged my old desktop pc out of the attic. it's a 600MHz PIII gateway with 128MB ram and a 20GB hard drive; at ten years of age, it's quite literally from another milennium. I've run virtual installs of ubuntu on my mac so I thought I could get some flavour of linux up and running. did a bit of reading about my options; xubuntu seemed to be touted as a good option so I installed it. it's not cutting the mustard though, the computer is running very sluggishly, which surprised me to be honest. it runs windows 98 fine, so I'm assuming there's a version of linux out there that'll do the job. did some more research and there's a linux variant for every opinion on the net. saw t-g's post on puppy linux there, (tried to install it last night without success - the live cd I burned is possibly corrupt though), and damn small linux could be a runner too... there's debian itself as well. apparently it runs much better than xubuntu. I dunno, I've read a lot of recommendations from a lot of random places. maybe there's some wisdom on the matter knocking around here.

I dunno, I just need something that will run a browser without giving out shit, which xubuntu ain't doing for me. it's a fucking pain in the hole to be honest. and... terminal is almost unusably garbled as well. also, I'll be installing apache and php for a bit of light local web development. that's it really. doesn't seem like a tall order. could do it on windows 98 fine probably, but my disc is scratched, I don't have the serial and...... fuck that shit.

ram is probably my problem. more ram ain't an issue unfortunately.

so any advice? help meeeee. ta. d

 

[error type 11]

Well it aint Linux but TinyXP has been resucitating old PC's for me a bit lately, havent tried anything that old though, original IBM Thinkpad is as far back as I went
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/24/tiny-xp-rev-09-windows-xp-with-cuise-control/

Or this little puppy
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
I havent installed it myself so not sure how it will work for you

 

[plug]

hey leo. how's the going?

yeah, I got around to trying dsl there earlier; it worked perfectly, but... as you'd imagine it's REALLY lighweight, so it's kind of a step too far in the other direction. so now I'm installing debian; it's going pretty well so far. read a benchmark article comparing it to xubuntu, and it seemed to kick xubuntu's ass performance-wise so... I'm feeling lucky!

 

[plug]

cool. this is waaay smoother. I'm happy now

 

[flashback]

so are you running Debian now are you?

 

[plug]

hey flashback. I am indeed, it's working very well. much, much better than xubuntu, which acted like it was getting kicked in the balls every ten seconds. got php and apache running no problem so I have my little coding environment too. so... I have everything I need. go debian!

I nearly burned the house down while I was tinkering away on the computer though; left on a pot of rice on the boil and totally forgot about it. atomised. smoke everywhere. no rice for the babby's lunch tomorrow then!

 

[flashback]

sound. I'll have to get back into my Debian at some point. Ubuntu is turning me into a soft bastid.

I am surprised Debian is that much faster than Xubuntu.

 

[plug]

yeah, I have no idea why that is. explanations welcome!

just on the phone about the laptop. looks like very bad and very expensive news... or maybe not. they're trying to figure out if it's the logic board or something else. PLEASE don't be the logic board....

looks like I'll be linuxing it up for a while yet!

 

[Doctor Muscles]

I has a similar problem with a pc that couldn't cut it with xubuntu.
Got puppy linux at http://www.puppylinux.org/
Seems the way it works is that you run it off a live cd or usb key and any settings you change can be saved to a hard disk for the next time you use it.
If you want to install it properly though I think you have to put DOS on the pc first and go through a whole rigamarole.

 

[plug]

yeah, I tried puppy but the cd didn't burn properly and it wouldn't run and I was too lazy to burn another. if it was anything like DSL it would probably be on the wrong side of basic anyway. still though, this OS on a cd/usb thing is pretty cool!

all I can literally do now is code, which is kind of nice/really boring. I've almost totally stopped thumpeding/facebooking. probably a good thing that.

 

[flashback]

got you terminal.
got your emacs.

gwan the plug.

 

[plug]

apt get install. the three greatest words in the english language.

now if I could only figure out why this fucker won't play dvds...

 

[flashback]

oh god yeah.
I used RedHat's Fedora's packet manager for a while.

Fucking fucking FUCK.

FAILED DEPENDENCIES.
Exiting.

Oh Jesus. It was actually often easier to compile from source than to use the pox ridden RPM stuff.

 

[ann post]

apt get install. the three greatest words in the english language.

now if I could only figure out why this fucker won't play dvds...

i remember in my debian days ending up using some other program for the dvd's. i'll be back in the land of debian in a few weeks i'd say. did you setup skype by the ways??

 

[henryxcrudos]

VectorLinux, and you will never use anything else. Honest. Great supportive community as well:
http://www.vectorlinux.com.

VectorLinux Light for yer old machines. I'm running VL Light 6.0 on an ancient Dell laptop, and it's much better than both Puppy and Zenwalk (not to speak of xubuntu, bloatmaster).