Hello,
One of my computers is an old win9x era machine and I have been running Vector Linux on it for quite some time, but I have finally decided to switch distros as Vector's package management is next to nil and it dont support RPM's, Deb's or any of the like, so i have to compile everything for it and I am just tired of doing that. I use that computer for nothing much more than basic activities such as SIP phone calls, IM/Chat, basic web browsing, email, and file storage/server (large tower with many hard drives), it handles these tasks fine given a good lightweight OS. I am looking for a distro that would be good for the above tasks, yet is lightweight, fast, fairly user friendly, has good package management and/or supports installer packages such as RPM's, Deb's and the like, and a good match for that computer.

The specifications are as follows:

Gateway2000 P5-133XL

CPU: Intel Pentium MMX OverDrive 200 MHz (P55C)

RAM: 128 MB

Chipset: Intel Triton i430FX

Graphics: ATI RageXL PCI

Sound: Sound Blaster 16 ISA

Network: Digital Systems 10 Mbps ISA

Boot Drive: 320 GB IDE Hard Drive

Optical: HP DVD Writer 200i

Other: USB 2.0 PCI card; PCI IDE controller card (for extra hard drives)

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated
Thanks in advance,
Tyler

128 RAM is not too much .
So my my advice will be a distro who do have a light weighted GUI .
If if do like a GUI .
A light weighted GUI is for instance XFCE .
As a example Fedora do a a flavor with XFCE

Absolute linux, Austrumi linux(latest iso on forum), Puppy, Debian base install from net install CD then..You can use DistroWatch search for extra stuff.

Puppy is single user and from what I read has same issue with app support as vector, just tried Debian this morning with netinstall and CD wouldn't even boot due to udev errors while handling PCI devices, Haven't heard of nor tried Absolute nor Austrumi yet but will try those out soon as they finish downloading, and have tried DistroWatch but just looking for opinions here before I waste a whole day installing an OS only to find it runs poorly on my hardware or doesn't work at all.

Also, another detail I almost forgot to mention is the CPU is i586, so that rules out i686 distros such as Arch or PCLinuxOS.

About to try out Absolute, but still open for suggestions in the mean time.

I personally would recommend Slackware, Vector or antiX. Connochaetos may also be worth a try, it is an Arch respin especially for i586 processors. And of course there are Tinycore and Slitaz.

By the way, what do you mean with "has the same issue with app support as vector'?

I have found that Vector Linux has poor app support, its near impossible to find wide support for it, it seems every time I want to install a new application the only way to do so is to compile it, cant do RPMs or DEBs, and for the most part Slackware packages dont seem to always be compatible with it, too many missing dependancies in the repos. I am simply tired of having to compile everything for it and having to resolve so many dependancies manually, then its worth ripping my hair out over when I not only have to compile something, but find out it simply will not compile on that system due to library conflicts or just flat out compile errors that I cannot seem to resolve...

Does it have to support DEBs and RPMs?

Arch, ofr example, uses its own package foramt and has no DEB or RPM support, but it has a lot of packages in the repository.

A lot of good tips on this blog:

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/

Vector cannot natively support DEBs or RPMs, and Arch is i686 only, however, I run arch on this computer, and I am looking to switch from it too for similar reasons. Many of the packages I have needed to install have not been in the repositories, and the RPMs of them you find on the websites dont work on Arch without going through more trouble than it's worth, however, many of the packages I havent found in pacman on Arch were in yaourt package manager, but I have found 9 times out of 10 the packages in yaourt package manager fail to install due to conflicting dependencies. Im just not fond of depending solely on a package manager, and being unable to install packages downloaded from the website of the developer such as RPMs and DEBs. I just need a distro that can support standard package types, so if it is not in my package manager I am not stuck unable to use it without compiling it and manually resolving a thousand dependencies and then finding out those dependencies also have dependencies :P. I have imaged my hard drive using dd and downloaded Absolute Linux, and am prepared to try it out, but that is currently on hold as I am awaiting a call from someone later this week on my SIP address and cannot afford the risk of complications making me unavailable.

Oh, and on one more note, I have found that its more trouble than it's worth for me to keep Arch up to date, because if you dont update several things quite often, the package manager seems to break.

Thanks for all the help so far, I will get back with you at the end of the week regarding how Absolute works out for me.

If you need support for DEBs than try antiX. It is based on Debian (so you have many packages available) and especially designed for older machines. I have installed it to a VM and it used about 36MB RAM after a fresh boot, with IceWM running.

I'd second the recommendation for antiX: see my review on this site of the latest version, antiX 11. It will run all of its software in 128MB: I had Dillo, a text editor, and a terminal running in 58MB!

I'll jump in and third antiX for you, although I've not used it on quite as old as a machine as yours, I'm running it on my old laptop and it is so nice to have it back. And yes, on a fresh install nothing running it will use about 36-40MB ram. Just be sure to give yourself a decent swap partition. One thing about it. The first time you use synaptic (the package manager), hit the reload button as soon as you open it up. The two times I've installed it (from the full version, not the core) I had to do that in order to see packages that weren't already installed on the machine.

You can probably start with the full version, I'm going to be getting a couple old laptops in about your ballpark, I'm going to try the full on one, and start from core (no x or anything) on the other. Supposedly AntiX core is lighter than Debian netinstall. I've not checked into this claim myself though.

Good luck and let us know what you choose and how it works out for you!

Slackware with XFCE should run on that. Slackware is very nice.

Let me throw in my lot with antiX, I love it.

I wish I could recommend #! (Crunchbang) because it is also very good and I'm using it right now, but I'm clocking in at about 150 MBs of RAM, probably because I have a lot of GNOME stuff under the hood.

You may also want to try wattOS based on Debian, but I believe it's beta-quality at the moment and quite new.

#!(Crunchbang) is a lovely minimal distro, but perhaps still a bit too heavy for your machine, unless you can find some things to trim down after install. My installation runs about 83MB ram on it's own, I've only changed the wallpaper and the conky a bit to suit my needs. Love the preconfigured hot-keys. Might be worth a shot? But I do agree with eveningsky, I think it might be a little too much for such a low-spec machine. This might have to be something else I test when I get those old laptops.