Dear Friends,
I have an old hardware, an AMD K6 3D Processor, 501 MHZ, HD 31,4GB.
I like it.
Wanting to install a free OS, I try many versions.
Finaly, I installed an OS that I had in a live CD from many time, a Brazilian version, the Kalango Linux, from 2003/2004, very easy, base in Debian, knoppix and Kurumin Linux, with a KDE realm of work. It has also ICE BOX, WINDOW MAKER and FLUXBOX, but not with all the applications.
I am looking for learning the Shell Bash Commands.
I give thanks to God for all these things.
May God bless you.

Try the simple commands first. The IBM site has a set of tutorials on Linux. Look in there for bash commands and shell scripting.

Thank you. I have been looking for such things at Google, and have obteined some. Thus, I will there also.

You may wish to look at Vector Linux 5.8 or 5.9 Standard. You can localize the OS to Brazilian Portuguese and you can have a more up to date OS that will run on your level of hardware.

Puppy Linux will also run on your vintage hardware.

I got slackware to work really good with xfce on a k6 @ 350 mhz

Thanks.
At moment, I prefer to learn how to use the Kalango Linux, because I am a new user, and it atends my needs.
I fact, I didn't install my Linux without the help of a friend of mine.
At future, perhaps I will try other versions.
Greetings.

Dear Friends,
Kalango 2003 is very good, but I have problems with its oldness.
I am only sharing with you that I am trying to install Debian 4.0, and I order the 21 CDs.
Please, see the respective thread in:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.p...b196561901308d
I think it will run in my hardware, and that it is very good.
I give thanks to God.
May He bless you.

Why would you order the 21 cd set when you only need 1 cd or 1 dvd?

There's a winmodem difficulty, that's why. The distros on your list do not come near to having the software library that Debian offers on those 21 cd's available on their install cd. Without high speed internet and with the difficulties using winmodems, the fella just appears to want to have the software on hand to use the old machine. Probably there's no dvd drive either, so the full 21 cd approach seems like the best choice for him. And Debian with XFCE desktop is likely a great approach as well.

Now, if he wants internet access and doesn't have an ethernet card in there or room for it (some old machines don't have enough slots), then a good thing for him to buy would be a normal external serial v92 modem. Nearly any of those will be able to be detected and connect to a dialup ISP.

If he stays with Etch the updates won't be so much that it would take days to download on dialup. Almost all the software is on the cd's with the exception of the non-free repo, debian-multimedia.org, Shame's Compiz Fusion repo (doubt he'll be using that) and the wine budget-dedicated.org repo for the latest Wine on Etch.

I've got Etch 4.0r1 on cd just for an old computer. No chance of an ethernet card being used on that because the videocard and soundcard/winmodem combo take up the 2 PCI slots. I've used USB (1.0, not even 1.1) cable on it, but that slows down the whole system so it's useless. Just using a dialup modem is faster! The downloads come faster on the USB cable but the mouse and system slow to a crawl. I'd rather swap cd's and have a responsive system. And that was on Windows 98. No idea if USB cable can even work on Linux since they use Windows drivers to work.

My old computer does have on board video. Remember SiS5598? I'd rather use a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI and have dialup internet than Comcast cable on an ethernet connection and that crappy on board video. If I'd crank it up for Linux, I'd substitute an SBLive for the Riptide (nothing against the Riptide but I wouldn't want to bother with the manual install of the winmodem driver from Linuxant), connect a dialup modem to serial, and use the videocard in the other slot. I've yet to try Linux on it, but that's why I burned the 21 cd's. Yeah, no dvd drive! Tried it on there but dvd's played herky jerky with PowerDVD 3 and newer versions didn't play at all. I just leave a cdrw drive in it now, an old HP 9110i. Old stuff like that lasts forever! VCD's actually play fine in it.

Everytime I think about doing that, I stop myself and ask why. So it just sits. A sentimental place in the closet is the best place for it now. But if someone wants to do something with old stuff like that, just having the whole distro on cd's is the way to go.

I think his distro has winmodem capabilities - most brasilian distros had that out of the box long before other ones because the hardware is very common here.

Also contrary to popular belief there are 12 ADSL lines in Brasil (evenly distributed between government agencies and drug runners)

Dear friend,
You are brazilian? I didn't know about government agencies. If you know it, please, make me know.
Thank you.

And I am very impressed with the number of answerings in so little time.
Thanks.

I am not brazilian but lived there for the last 10 years or so.Might become brazilian if my home government continues to treat me like shit though.

Actually the bit about ADSL was supposed to be a joke.I live pretty much at the end of communications (1 TV channel over the air,no cable,no cell phone coverage) and had a line in 24 hours.

Dear Friends,
Eventually, I installed the Kurumin Linux 7.0, a brazilian version, because it is the Debian 4.0 a little customized and has the support to Lucent Agere Winmoden.
I am astonished with the performance of Kurumin Linux 7.0 in my hardware. I can use the KDE, iceweasel, many documents in br.office.org (like OppenOffice) and even the adobe reader. Nevertheless, the mouse was not recognized, and I am using the numerical keyboard as a virtual mouse, until I can configure my mouse serial in "COM2".
Please see:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=141402#141402
Concerning Kurumin 7.0 (I am not sure, but I think it is only in Portuguese), see:
http://www.guiadohardware.net/kurumin/#download
Greetings.

Thornbush,

Can't you just purchase another mouse? (Porque nao procurando otro mouse?)

Dear friends,
Thank you. The mouse functions.
It is that it was installed in COM2 in Windows, and it corresponds to ttyS1 in Debian 4.0, but it was writen in xorg.conf: ttyS0.
Please, see the link that I have mentioned of Debian's Forum to see more about the installation.
Greetings.