Linux distro for a legacy box? (P1, 32m Ram)

[philwebs]

Two colleagues at work want me to put linux on old boxes (for their children to play with) Otherwise they are off to the scrapheap.

1. Pentium 1 MMX, 65m ram, 1.5 gig drive.
(Got an old Morphix going to demonstrate and may squeeze Suse 8.2, maybe, minimum spec box)

2. Pentium 1 MMX, 32 megs ram, 1.5gb drive.

This is the problem. Is there an ok linux distro to replace Windows 95 suitable for children to play games, internet, office apps etc that will fit on such a system ?

One problem is the drive is full and I need to erase it suitable for an install. Suggestions for partitioner/disk zapper on a floppy appreciated.

Also I have a slow connection and no cd burner so would need to buy a small cd distro to put onto this box.

Presume non-KDE desktop is needed......but which one

Regards Phil

[jamez1988]

Try Vector Linux. (http://www.vectorlinux.com/)
I've never used it, but I have a system with almost identical specs I've been meaning to try it out on.
(It's faster then slackware, too!)

[tcarradine]

vector is nice, but a bit difficult to setup... you could just use a stripped down version of suse or redhat... the main thing you want to remember is to take it easy on the window manager...

try xfce4 (www.xfce.org) for a really full featured window manager that doesn't take a lot of resources to run...

also, you might just use the "light" morphix version (approx 350mb) and install it to the hard drive. that uses xfce4 and bypasses the custom setup you would have to do to strip down a larger distro...

Tim

[psi42]

Slackware, or something slackware-based.


If you want something _really_ fast, try DeLi, which is based on an old version of slack. It's designed for somewhat lower spec hardware, however, so you might consider something that aims closer to your hardware.

I haven't used Vector since version 3.2, but I think that might be the best choice in this case, if you want to use it as a desktop.


:)

~psi42

[philwebs]

Thanks for your assistance. I didnt make use of your advice but it has been noted, appreciated and hopefully anybody else having the problem will find your information useful.

I didtched the P1 MMX 233mhx, 32 megs of ram box as I didnt have a copy of the distros you said to hand, and more significantly found an old box in the basement which was to be scrapped and was even better. (also no cd burner)

The P1 MMX 233mhz 65 megs of ram box just took Suse 8.2, bit of a squeeze. Used lower screen resolution to get it to install. Father delighted (my colleague) and son was very pleased.

Box in basement was an excellent P2 255mhs, 550 megs of Ram. , 4 gigs hard drive. Superb. Suse went in a treat and that colleague has an excellent box for daughter to play with (and may open his eyes)

Another collegue has a box which is no longer used, can I sort it...of course.

These colleagues have heard me ranting and laughed, now they understand what I was going on about. Amazingly the administrators of the office system who do it remotely from another jurisdiction are vehemently anti open source. Hopefully they will discard more boxes for me to pass on.......

Regards Phil

[Parcival]

I don't know what cathegory my post exactly fits in, but I guess this thread is a good place.

From a friend of mine I have two boxes at home, both P II with 64 MB RAM. My job is to get them ready for him and his mom so they can do word processing, browse the web (Firefox), read and write emails (Thunderbird), and in his computer there's also a new CD-Writer as he wants to burn best-of albums from his huge heavy metal CD collection.

On his box there is currently SuSE 8.2 running. He's been using Windows for years although he hates M$, but after two months with KDE he feels comfortable with it. BTW, he and his mom are VERY computer illiterate. However, he isn't totally happy with SuSE 8.2 as (the old) K3B (that came with it) doesn't support his cd-writer (although YaST correctly detects it) plus SuSE 8.2 generally is pretty slow on his machine. SuSE above 8.2 refuses to install with only 64MB of RAM available.

So here my questions:


I think I'm gonna do the install with Gentoo as I can tailor it to the boxes, but I'm willing to go for another non-bloat distro. Arguments?
What windowmanager shall I choose? XFCE looks perfect, but does it also have an easy filemanager like Konqueror?
If I carefully compile everything using Gentoo and XFCE, will I loose the extra speed as soon as I compile KDE programs like K3B into it?
General ideas on what filemanager and cd-writing program I should install? Please remember they need to be handled by computer illiterates - burning CDs from the command line isn't really an option. ;)


Thank you for any suggestions. :)