Distro for low spec pc

jaqian

Anyone recommend a good distro that will run well on a P2 with only 64Mb ram? Its for a home pc: word / email / internet (dial-up).

Cheers,
jaqian

Syth

jaqian wrote:

Anyone recommend a good distro that will run well on a P2 with only 64Mb ram? Its for a home pc: word / email / internet (dial-up).

Cheers,
jaqian

I once installed gentoo on a machine like that. That took a while.

Distro isn't really specific, what's more important is the window manager/desktop environment. Stay away from KDE and Gnome. For word processing don't use OpenOffice, find some less featured word processor. Same for email and internet.

What you need is a distro that offers a lot of choice, so you can choose not to use KDE or Gnome.

Stark

Syth wrote:

For word processing don't use OpenOffice, find some less featured word processor. Same for email and internet.

Abiword is really good as a lightweight word processor. For desktop, you can use Xfce, it's a lightweight Gtk+ desktop. Internet wise, I think Epiphany is quite lightweight.

edit:

This article could be good to read: http://www.binonabiso.com/en/Ubuntu-miniRAM-HOWTO.html

It seems to suggest that Ubuntu is excellent for memory challenged PCs.

Here's a link to Xubuntu, Xfce based Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu . Not sure if it's production ready, but if it's not, you can still install Xfce on standard Ubuntu.

niallb

Damn Small Linux

With 64M RAM, type install at the boot prompt to get
an installer menu instead of running as a live cd.

You'll be amazed at the apps it includes.
Some of them arevery simple, but the browser is firefox
and no other distro will run it so fast on that system.
Default email client is sylpheed which is screaming fast,
and full of features. It handles diaup well.
Abiword is available as a download from the control panel,
as is openoffice. I'd agree with Stark and recommend abiword.

NiallB

steveland?

As I posted on the BLUG try FeatherLinux.

Stripped down version of Knoppix, ISO is only 70 megs or so (not the 200 I posted by accident in the BLUG )

Feather Linux is a Linux distribution which runs completely off a CD or a USB pendrive and takes up under 128Mb of space. It is a Knoppix remaster (based on Debian), and tries to include software which most people would use every day on their desktop.

What applications does it include?

As of version 0.7.5, it includes:
Kernel 2.4.27, Abiword, siag, Dillo, Firefox, Captive-NTFS, gaim, ethereal, vim, Sylpheed, XMMS and plugins, Imposter, IceWM, wavplay, mpg321, FreeNX, John the Ripper, Tcl, qemu, kismet, abcde, macchanger, screen, paketto, ogg123 and other Ogg Vorbis tools, axyFTP, fireftp, rox-filer, cdrecord, mkisofs, rdesktop, tcpdump, parted, partimage, xfsprogs, Rhapsody, didiwiki, torsmo, GNUpod, GRUB, dsniff, aircrack, madwifi, dnsmasq, foremost, antiword, e2undel, iftop, bbpager, utelnetd, minicom, index, gpart, socat, traceroute, SciTE, prozilla, Midnight Commander, Samba, elmo, tmsnc, apsfilter, gmplayer, mount.app, chntpw, tinycc, nano, Xzgv, Xpdf, naim, hdparm, usbview, index, recoverdm, mtr, cdparanoia, betaftpd, Chipmunk Basic, gqcam, e3, lua, cdparanoia, giFTcurs, mtools, emelfm2, vncdec, elhttp, quagga, ettercap, wavemon, iptables, recover, amap, hping2, cabextract, splitvt, pciutils, LinNeighborhood, nmap and nmapfe, portmap and nfs-common, aumix, CTorrent, VNCviewer, sqlite, SSH and SCP, DHCP client, xtdesktop, PPP and PPPoE support, NTFS resize support, an RSS reader, stress, cpuburn, the Monkey webserver, Xcalc, Fluxbox, evilwm, the XBase apps, and the various standard console and system tools.

http://featherlinux.berlios.de/

Snowbat

Any chance you could pick up another 64MB (or more) to drop in? 128MB will give you a much smoother experience.

jaqian

Snowbat wrote:

Any chance you could pick up another 64MB (or more) to drop in? 128MB will give you a much smoother experience.

Working on that as we speak. But to get started I wanted some bloatless Linux to try out. I knew there was some out there just couldn't remember the distros names. One that springs to mind is Basic Linux but I don't think its as user friendlyas say Damn Small. At the mo I'm downloading VectorLinux on a couple ppls advice. My "broadband" (ripwave) is a bit slow, so downloading it in stages.

Red Alert

a stage 3 install of gentoo would allow you to customize your distro like that.

jaqian

Red Alert wrote:

a stage 3 install of gentoo would allow you to customize your distro like that.

Does Gentoo give you the option of having a minimal install?

Syth

jaqian wrote:

Does Gentoo give you the option of having a minimal install?

Pretty much. You choose which packages to install from the ground up. Remeber, gentoo is compiled from source. A stage one gentoo install starts with you compiling the c compiler, then you compile the linux kernel, then you compile and install all the programmes you want, like bash, KDE or sed, etc. A stage 2 gives you the compiler compiled, the rest is the same. A stage 3 gives you the compiler and linux kernel compiled. I think that's the breakdown, right Red Alert?

Since you are hand picking the packages to install you have a lot of control over what to install, so you can install whatever you want. The gentoo package manager is pretty sweet and will do all the hardwork for you, like downloading and installing the packages and all their dependencies. Since you are compiling everything from source it can take a while. Especially on a low spec PC. You'll have to babysit your machine for a few days, coming back every few hours to see if it's done compiling.

Red Alert

that's right. stage 3 you get glibc, gcc and the basic environment precompiled. does make for a very cutdown/customised system as needs be.

mp3guy

But it takes 3 days or so to install. Damn Small Linux, or ubuntu running xfce with abiword should be grand.

jaqian

Thanks for all your help and suggestions. I've downloaded Damn Small & VectorLinux and will give them a go as soon as I get my hardware sorted. FeatherLinux seems to be dead, pity.

In case any of you are interested I re-discovered BasicLinux http://www.volny.cz/basiclinux/ which is a minimal linux distro that works on 386 with 8Mb RAM and up in case any of you are interested.