Distro for PIII (Network,Downloading)
 

I'm building a Pentium3 (1Ghz) Machine (384MB ram,Geforce 5200) and i wanna use it for downloading only and sharing the downloads through my network. The network i wanna create will include two other desktops (the one is in another building) and a laptop, so it must be a wireless network. Do u have any ideas as to what distro should i use and any guide for creating this wireless network??

cheers

With a low spec machine such as this you might want to try a lightweight distro such as Puppy Linux, Slitaz or Mepis antiX - all of these should be able to network wirelessly.

Memory is more important than CPU speed. I have a Thinkpad with a Pentium M underclocked to 600MHz and that runs well enough. If you want a GUI on that box, pick something light; also pick a nice stable distro.

Salix will run in 256MB. The installer gives you the option of three installations: Full, Basic (GUI and web-browser), or Core (no GUI). Being based on Slackware, it's rock-solid: install it, run it, forget about it.

you can install probably any distro, just do not install/use graphical environment. If you really need GUI try a really simple one. Switch off all the services you do not want to use. For downloading and network you do not need anything but the base functionality, and it will work (even on a such an old hardware).

A lightweight distro with a lightweight window manager such as Openbox or IceWM will idle on a P3 at about 60MB RAM, that leaves plenty of RAM for use with other apps. If you want real lightweight and a GUI then the answer would be TinyCore. Obviously with wireless networking and something like Samba to share files then the memory usage will increase due to extra services running but, you could have a fully functional setup using 75-100MB RAM.

i'm trying to boot salix-lxde and it says in the note that older machines should use huge.s kernel, but when i enter the command "huge.s" it says "invalid or corrupt kernel image".

Slitaz is my vote , light and functional..........

slitaz after trying to boot stucks at "Parsing ELF"

If you read the message more carefully, you'll see that by "old machines", it's referring to Pentium 1 CPUs or older. Your P3, is more than capable running the default hugesmp.s kernel. No need to change that.

yeah i tried with hugesmp also but i got stack at parsing ELF also..

Then you have a hardware problem. Start by testing your RAM with memtest and doing some stress tests on the CPU.

memtest 4.20 freezes...

Here's a good how-to for turning an old PC into a torrent slave:
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/05...nt-like-a-pro/

Hope that helps you some! :)

Well, there you have it. Try taking out all the RAM modules and put them back one by one. If you're lucky, you'll get at least one that works.

2 of the 3 ram modules where broken...now i'm left with 64MB :(