Which distro would you recommend for an old pentium I 133mhz?

rudlavibizon · 09-07-2006, 05:49 AM

I'm relatively new to linux and have been using Ubuntu distro for a few months back. I have it installed on my main box and on my mothers old laptop and i'm very satisfied. Anyway, a good friend of mine saw it and asked me if i could install it for her on her old pentium I 133mhz (she couldn't tell me the other specs) on which she tortures herself with windows 98. I imediately assumed that her computer is too old for the distro i'm using (ubuntu 6.06) and promised her to check out some other distros out there. So, while i'm there googling for it, could anybody with similar experiences recommend a distro for her? She has a very slow dial-up connection and uses the computer mainly for surfing and e-mail. She would also like (if thats possible), as an illustrator and cartoon artist, to use "photoshop"-like program(s). In that respect could Gimp work on such an old box? If not, what other similar and lighter software are there?

weibullguy · 09-07-2006, 06:55 AM

I'd suggest you read this thread for the distro question.

I'm not a GIMP user (or anything else for that matter), so I really can't provide any valuable insight.

dive · 09-07-2006, 12:48 PM

I think gimp would run so slow it would probably be unusable. But then she wouldn't be able to run photoshop on it either.

pnellesen · 09-07-2006, 11:05 PM

I've got a Slackware install on an ancient P-1 133MHz laptop that works ok - I use XFCE or FluxBox as my window manager. It does have 96MB Ram, hopefully yours has a little more than that, but FireFox runs "acceptably" fast on it (only thing I use it for is web browsing when I'm in my basement and don't feel like going upstairs

). Not sure if that translates well to something like Gimp, though...

jacook · 09-10-2006, 03:48 AM

Here are some distros aimed at older Hardware: In respoect to programs like the Gimp, it should run fine providing you choose a less intensive desktop environment, Which all thsese distros have

feather Linux
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/

Vector Linux
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

BeatrIX
http://www.watsky.net/

hope this Helps,

Jake