Help choosing a distro on an old computer....what will run?
 

First post here. I would like to turn my old desktop into a linux-based machine. All I want it for is basically a jukebox in my basement, web surfing, and filesharing over my home network (its hardwired to the router). Computer specs:

800mHz P3
20gig main hard drive, 10 gig second
256meg RAM
nVidia GeForce 400? (its like 4 years old, not sure which model it is)


I took two quizzes online, one of them gave me Ubuntu and one gave me SuSE as my best option. Now, I'm not a programmer and won't be doing any coding, I just want something relatively fast and stable so I can stretch the life of this computer a little more. Any suggestions? I just want to make sure that what I get will be able to run on this machine.

Ubuntu, SuSE, Mandriva, Debian, Fedora Core would be solid choices for you. I'd try debian. I would be using it right now if it would support my brand new computer but debian's stable versions are released so much later than other distros. Not a problem to you, with that old computer of yours :)

Hi,

You should try Vector Linux (http://www.vectorlinux.com). It is based on Slackware but much easier to configure. It is quite up to date and works well on older hardware.

There are two different versions available:

- Standard: Includes the base system and lightweight window managers (e.g. Fluxbox, IceWM)

- SOHO: Includes KDE 3.4.2

As KDE requires quite a bit of RAM, I would recommend the Standard Edition.

Another Slackware based distro is Zenwalk. It ships the XFCE desktop evironment, however KDE is available in the software repositories.

If you want to learn a lot about Linux, you should give Slackware a try. It's the oldest distro available and I use it as my main system.

You call that old?
Mine is from year 2000, celeron 635mhz 256mb intel i810 lol running Hedinux atm. Was previously running Utopian (livecd built on top of Kanotix with e17 as primary desktop) other than i have problems cuz most distros are running Xorg 6.9 unless they are outdated

Yeah mine is from 2000 as well, it was a high school graduation gift. It came with 128meg ram, I upgraded to 256 (woohoo). I've been running Mandrake 10.1 for the past week or so and I'm liking it so far. Its doing everything I need it to do, and its been interesting learning a new OS as well.

Yup, Mandrake now known as Mandriva is sure nice.

Ubuntu is the best linux distro that I have ever used. Was using the Fedora code but the Os seems chunky and slow. Switched to Ubuntu and all is great. The install is simple and getting the OS up to speed is really easy considering codecs, drivers, ect.

I'm running Hedinux on my Celeron pc for the past 2 1/2 days

These are the live cd linux distros I have using on a pent 200mx running 64 meg of ram.
1. Knoppix 4.02 (with a swapfile. knoppix will automatically recognise how much ram there is, and will give suggestions)Even so Knoppix runs very slow)
2. Feather Linux
3. Damn Small Linux
4. Beatrix (need 128meg)
5. Slax 5.06 (runs well with Fluxbox)needs 128 meg for KDE
7. Puppy Unleashed 1.07

Puppy 1.0.8.r1
 

Just to let you know that an updated version of Puppy is now available. For me with the pent 200mmx with 64 meg of ram, is that apart from win 98se, it is the only mini live cd distro that I've used so far that auto detects the sound card. (if there are others let me know) That's a great plus!:D

and Puppy uses JWM!! :D check out bsdgeek.no-ip.org for themes and add-ons related to JWM... joesbox wrote a full perl script that will integrate the 'debian menu' into the JWM menu... so that's excellent!!

To stay on topic.. That computer really isn't very old for a linux machine.. most distros (save the HUGE ones like FC or SUSE or Mandriva) would run very nicely on it... Debian, Slackware, etc...