I'm planning on doing a net install of Etch stable tomorrow on a Plll 500 that I have at work, I know it'll work out okay as Ubuntu 6.06 is currently running on it.
Will Etch run on a Pll 266 or a Pll 400? Is Etch set-up, optimized for Plll processors? The reason I ask is that I also have some ancient Pll units that would run Debian very well (they're currently running Ubuntu, but, are slow as death).
Ubuntu supports my older Lexmark Optra S 1855 network laser printer at work. Is there a listing somewhere of the printers supported by Debian Etch?
Thank you for any and all replies.

I have an ancient P-II running Etch here. Okay, it doesn't have Gnome or KDE, but XFCE does the trick just fine :-) I must admit I added as much RAM as I could get into it (384 MB IIRC)...

Printing and Linux, for everything you'd always wanted to know and much more: http://www.linuxprinting.org/

Excellent:-) Thanks, Dutch Master.

Etch's default 486 kernel will work on any Pentium or Celeron of any variety.

I run Etch on a 120mhz Pentium system with 48megs of RAM. 48megs of RAM is insufficient for KDE (my usual desktop environment), but it runs just fine with IceWM. How much RAM do your Pentium II systems have? If it's less than 96megs of RAM, I'd avoid KDE or GNOME. IceWM with pcmanfm for file manager will run really slick, though.

I've got two Pll 266 units that have 192 MB RAM and a Pll 400 with 256 MB RAM. Debian will be a good fit:-)
I'm still curious about the printing issue that I mentioned in my first post. The version of cups that ships with Ubuntu (6.10) identifies my network laser printer at work out of the box. I was curious if there is a way to determine if Debian's version of cups will have the driver for my Lexmark Optra s 1855 printer.

I personally don't know anything about printers in Linux. I still use Windows for printing, because I couldn't figure out how to set the paper type and print quality and stuff (using gtk apps like Gimp, Abiword, Firefox, etc.).

Admittedly, I only tried a couple times, and didn't look any further than the "print" point-and-click dialog. But I just figured that I know how to do it in Windows and the computer the printer is attached to runs Windows anyway...

@hitest: Debian doesn't include drivers that are not released under the GPL. If Lexmark has Linux drivers then you can install those in Debian, either as .deb (if provided by Lexmark) or more likely from a source-tarball.

@IsaacKuo: like hitest, if the manufacturer of that printer has a Linux driver you can use it with Cups. Cups offers a web-based frontend for installation and administration of (new) printers.

I bought an HP printer because I knew it had good Linux support. But since it's attached to my wife's Windows computer, I never really experimented very much with it in Linux.

I found thiis link at linuxprinting.org:

http://openprinting.org/show_printer...k-Optra_S_1855

It states that it works perfectly:-) Is there any way to determine if this is a GPL driver?

I just completed a clean install last night of 4.0 on an IBM 300PL Plll 667 with 256 MB RAM, 20 GB HD. I am absolutely thrilled with the results. I am a huge fan of distros that are rock solid, stable. My other favourite distros are Slackware and FreeBSD.
Debian 4.0 is amazing; it is rock-steady, reliable. Very cool.
Boring screenshot to follow:

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...an4-stable.jpg

At the moment I have a minimal Etch install on a P11 with 64 megs of ram but I first did a full desktop install with gnome. It was slow and I did manage to hang it up a couple of times. I started to have acpi issues and nuked the install before I took time to learn how to fix it. Your units should run fine if speed is not an issue. I probably will go with a "light" wm of some kind later but right now I just run elinks.

Yes, I will go with Flux or XFce on my Pll units. Debian rocks!

I have a Gnome/Etch desktop on 2 slow PC's (Via Samuel C3, 796Mhz, i586, but with 512 megs of ram)... I ran it with IceWM, it feels much faster...

I plan to also download the Xfce Etch (cd#1), to install on an older PC...

Well, I just conducted my first experiment with Etch on older computers. This afternoon at work I did a clean install of Etch using the network iso on a Pll 400 IBM with 256 MB RAM, 10 GB HD. The install went without a hitch. I was very pleasantly surprised that Etch found my Lexmark Optra S 1855 network laser printer; after I typed in the network address for the printer it suggested the postscript driver and it prints:-)
I was happy to format and remove Ubuntu 6.06 from the unit as it runs lighter and faster now!
Tomorrow I've got three more units to get started on, a Plll 500, and two Pll 266s.
I'm very impressed with the maturity and stability of Etch:-) I'm a happy nerd today:-)

Interesting.
My second experiment with Etch on an older machine has been a success. I installed Etch on an old, generic beige box, a no-name Pll 266 with 192 MB RAM. When I ran Ubuntu 6.06 on the unit my students found the unit to be unusable (I'm an elementary school teacher). However, my children have noticed a definite performance improvement with Etch.
Children are highly adaptable and have no fear of Linux. In my classroom I've built a small computer lab (21 computers) with a mixture of old and new computers donated from people and local businesses. I have a mixture of Linux, Windows and Macs. I'm very slowly migrating my computers to Linux. Etch will be the cornerstone of my migration plan as it is robust and well-supported. I have 7 linux boxes in my classroom. Next week I'll be doing another clean install with Etch.