What distro should I use on an older PC?

jamathis · Post by **jamathis** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 7:16 pm

I have an old Compaq Presario 7922 with a 500mHz AMD K6-2, 160 MB RAM, and a 30 GB HD. I'm not really looking for a small-sized distro like Damn Small, I'm looking for a full distro. I've tried SuSe 8.0 and Ubuntu on it, but it ran both of them very slowly. I was thinking Red Hat or Fedora, but I figure it will run slow like Ubuntu. Gnome is preferred over KDE also.

Post by **Patrick** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 7:20 pm

How experienced in Linux are you? You could try Slackware or Arch running XFCE. You "have to" run KDE or Gnome then I'd recommend bumping up your RAM to at least 512 Meg.

jamathis · Post by **jamathis** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 8:01 pm

I'm somewhat experienced, definitely not an expert. I've used Slackware before, but it wasn't my cup of tea so to speak. I'm not sure about Arch, I've never tried it.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 8:07 pm

jamathis wrote:I'm somewhat experienced, definitely not an expert. I've used Slackware before, but it wasn't my cup of tea so to speak. I'm not sure about Arch, I've never tried it.

If you just throw a little more RAM in that machine I think SUSE 10.0 would work for you, 10.0 had a major performance boost, so that might work, but you will need more memory for that. SUSE 10.0 was the first SUSE to offer a full fledged GNOME, 10.1 is due on the 13th of April.

If you don't want to upgrade your memory, you really need to consider a light weight window manager, because not only is the processor relativly slow, but the bus and the speed of the memory is also much slower than what modern distributions have their min. system requirements set for. If I were you I would give either Debian or FreeBSD a go, I like FreeBSD better than Debian, but that's really a personal choice. On this hardware I would use XFCE.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 8:40 pm

Ubuntu with xfce rather than gnome? I doubt it would be blazing, but I would imagine it would be usable.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 10:02 pm

If Slackware ain't for you, and Arch is a bit too "hands-on", I'd try Vector, in your present situation.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 10:42 pm

Vector is nice. The standard edition would probably work great on that system. Debian is another possibility if you pick a lightweight window manager after a base install.

Linc · Post by **Linc** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 11:30 pm

Snarkout wrote:Ubuntu with xfce rather than gnome? I doubt it would be blazing, but I would imagine it would be usable.

I have a 433 mhz emachine running Ubuntu and XFCE and it goes right along.

no1important · Post by **no1important** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:48 am

I would suggest Ubuntu or Dam small linux.

johnnywtllts · Post by **johnnywtllts** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:41 pm

I don't think it comes with an installer anymore - and people might think it's lame, but I've got to say that Slax 5.06 is the slickest and fastest "distro" I've gotten to run on my POS. I had Slackware on it, but needed to make some room for Windows for some industrial stuff for work I wanted to have access to at home.

To the best of my knowledge, It installed to the hard drive as a standard? Slackware install, but one that is tweaked to the max for speed, has all the nice fonts, ndiswrapper works like a charm, etc. I mean KDE on this actually runs as fast as XFCE did on my machine with my own Slackware install.

There is still a command line procedure to install the new Slax 5.08 to HD, but I'm going to give Vector Standard edition a whirl first. If it's not as nice as Slax, I think I'll do the manual install of Slax, and set about figuring out how to do a Slackware install as well as this guy (Tomas) has done, for future reference.

johnnywtllts · Post by **johnnywtllts** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 8:41 am

Vector!Vector!Vector! Good call Wally and Judland.

Very slick, nice. The standard iso installed to just 1.1 GB of HD space. Little bump with ndiswrapper - searched their forum and had to upgrade the ndiswrapper package. Had tried the live RC2 CD flawlessly -but when I went to install it, it ate up my 2GB partition before it was installed - maybe I did something wrong - but anywho very impressive so far.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:19 pm

johnnywtllts wrote:Vector!Vector!Vector! Good call Wally and Judland.

Very slick, nice. The standard iso installed to just 1.1 GB of HD space. Little bump with ndiswrapper - searched their forum and had to upgrade the ndiswrapper package. Had tried the live RC2 CD flawlessly -but when I went to install it, it ate up my 2GB partition before it was installed - maybe I did something wrong - but anywho very impressive so far.

Glad it works for you, johnny.

Just a side note, from the Vector website:

Vector Linux SOHO is relatively heavy compared to the standard version. It is recommended that your system meets these requirements:

Processor: Pentium III compatible or better (so you may use AMD).
Hard disk: 3 GB for the system, then you need more for your personal files.
Memory: 128 MB, spare 256 MB for comfort.
Video card and Monitor capable of 1024x768 resolution, 24 bits.
Standard mouse, keyboard, sound card, CDROM, etc.

johnnywtllts · Post by **johnnywtllts** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 7:01 pm

Cool deal Judland. I saw the stuff about the SOHO edition 5.1.1 (it comes with KDE and some other stuff) - but the live CD I was using was the "Standard" edition 5.1 - that's why I was surprised when it ate up the 2GB partition (I thought maybe it had something to do with installing from the live CD instead of an ISO). Maybe I'm still missing something. Anyhow - Thanks again.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 8:35 pm

I'm downloading the iso for the soho edition right now (only one? That's all I see.). I'll be giving it a spin on my test box.

jamathis · Post by **jamathis** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 12:29 am

I think I'll give Vector a whirl and see how it works for me. Thanks for the suggestions.