The Brand New UltraMegaSuper "Which Distro" Thread

Hello there,

I am working on IT in a school right now. Looking around what we have in ye old werehouses I found some old computers and I thought: "Hey, could I make a Linux cluster with them and maybe... just maybe... make something good and interesting out of this old machines?"

So, I have two questions:

1) What would be the best distro to try to create a cluster with several computers? I've been out of the Linux scene from sometime, but I remember a distro called.. Beowulf I believe, which was designed to make clusters.

2) Okay, the machines I'm intending to use are around 15 old IBM Thinkpad 380ED ... yeah... quite old... 133MHz Pentium MMX... tee-hee! Do you guys consider even WORTH the hassle of creating a cluster with those things other than the geeky experience?

Thanks in advance guys!

Maybe check this out:
http://errorbound.dyndns.org/linux/openmosix/

One of the BSD Variants

Originally Posted by KillerFry Hello there, I am working on IT in a school right now. Looking around what we have in ye old werehouses I found some old computers and I thought: "Hey, could I make a Linux cluster with them and maybe... just maybe... make something good and interesting out of this old machines?" So, I have two questions: 1) What would be the best distro to try to create a cluster with several computers? I've been out of the Linux scene from sometime, but I remember a distro called.. Beowulf I believe, which was designed to make clusters. 2) Okay, the machines I'm intending to use are around 15 old IBM Thinkpad 380ED ... yeah... quite old... 133MHz Pentium MMX... tee-hee! Do you guys consider even WORTH the hassle of creating a cluster with those things other than the geeky experience? Thanks in advance guys!

If I remember that correctly those old dogs would be Pentium-1 machines,
P133 or P150, maybe? If you add their power in BogoMips minus the cluster
administration overhead out of the equation I'd say: if it's for geekdom-come
go for it; in terms of practical use ONE new Athlon 3200 will cost you less in
power (minus the tied up network-infrastructure) and have more kick for the buck ;}


Cheers,
Tink

i want to add a o/s to a second pc. which one is the most simple to install. the pc would be used for basic desktop duties ( email/internet/chat/ect).real basic stuff. the target pc is going to be pent.4,1.8ghz celeron,80gb hard drive,1.256 gb ram memory,ect. this is one of those questions i bet gets asked 1000 times a day.

any modern distro is very simple to install.... fedora, suse, mepis, ubuntu etc... don't pick one by the installer, that's over and done with within an hour... you've then got to live with it long term after that.

Originally Posted by muzikb this is one of those questions i bet gets asked 1000 times a day.

Yes, yes it does, because people fail to read the guidlines when signing up, or the stickies at the top of the forums, and then go and post without having searched LQ first....

Like acid_kewpie says, don't pick it based on the installer, and ease of install and ease of use are 2 totally different things.

For your needs (making some assumptions like you wanting decent hardware detection etc.) Ubuntu would be a good choice. 256 RAM is the reccomended for the live cd. That's to install the desktop version, or you can do what i did, install the server one (simple text based install)then install the desktop packages, and the kernel. The nit's basically the desktop version

Yeah, I know the KDE isn't the smallest or fastest DE but still, I like it
Gnome just seems to be limited to me
Fluxbox or XFCE would be great too. I was thinking something that can load all to RAM and be a full blown desktop experience so I can play movies, browse net, use Irc, office probably.

I know all this makes the distro bigger and bigger but I would like to get it done right in the first time.

I'm still checking out the DSL. Other than that, I'm looking the SLAX but still I haven't decided on which to use.

as mentioned above, puppy is a good choice, especially if you want it to load completely into the ram.

SimplePup seemes quite nice. When I started to seek these distros the Puppy server was down Seems to work now.

Originally Posted by Zmyrgel Yeah, I know the KDE isn't the smallest or fastest DE but still, I like it Gnome just seems to be limited to me Fluxbox or XFCE would be great too. I was thinking something that can load all to RAM and be a full blown desktop experience so I can play movies, browse net, use Irc, office probably. I know all this makes the distro bigger and bigger but I would like to get it done right in the first time. I'm still checking out the DSL. Other than that, I'm looking the SLAX but still I haven't decided on which to use.

Incidentally, I felt the same way about GNOME until I tried Ubuntu... now after putzing around with it, I find it in many ways to be more full-featured than any other DE I've used. Not to start a religious war or anything, but GNOME needed a second shot for me to appreciate it. Just a thought.

Hello gang, first time post here, and I got a question, I have an old laptop in the closet its old, (p3 350mhz win 98se) and no! its not my only pc I do have modern equipment, however I was thinking about playing with Linux and installing to see if I get some life out of it. So here is the question "which version of linux would possibly work ok".(sort of upgrade to a current usability, since I cant put win 2k on it) I have tried upgrading to win 2k but no go (video drivers). Just wondering, or is it time to Garage sale it?

Thanks

DZZ

A+
Network+
Server +
MCP
MCSA+ sec

I have been playing with Ubuntu lately. There is an associated distribution targeted at low end machines called Xubuntu. Check out: http://www.xubuntu.org/

Mons

try one of the many live CDs, then you can check which ones are OK with your hardware without actually installing anything.
The only downside to this is while you are evaluating them, everything is loaded off of CD and CDs are far far slower than hard drives.
Try KNOPPIX or UBUNTU
there is a "Distro Review" link in the main menu on the right, that should get you started

i would say debian. i have an old compaq pII 333 laptop with libranet/debian on it, and it runs great. vector linux would be worth checking out, too.