I have decided to use an old pc which is running Windows XP Professional as the first desktop I try to install Linux on. I have used Linux on servers at work and through VMware on my mac, but never installed it on a desktop. The computer on which Linux will be installed is a Dell Dimension 4100 with a Pentium 3 Processor and 512mb of RAM. Old, but works fine! For such an old computer, it runs pretty stable and has not given me any problems at all. I just want to put a Linux 32 bit operating system on it now and blow away Windows for good. Can you suggest a good 32 bit Distribution that I will be happy with? I plan on storing a little data but mainly want to create an NFS share for a home network I will make. I'll take any suggestions. Thanks!

What type of Linux distro did you run on your servers? With a question like yours, the only answers that you are going to get are other users favorite distros. I'm not even going to bother telling you what I think you might like because it is the exact same thing that I run. Even though I know it will work well with older Dells.

That's exactly what I want to hear. Your favorite Distro will be fine. I used CentOS 4.7 and 5.2. That is all I have ever seen...

I must restate that it has to be a 32 bit! The pc wont handle a 64 bit version...

First look: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

That's probably not a complete list of all major distros, but it has a lot of them. Most (possibly all) major distros will have 32 bit versions also.

The only thing I would say is that with an older computer, you might want to look at one where it is easy enough to run alternate window managers. Gnome and KDE can be a bit large and, with all the toys, can kill your processor time. (hopefully, I don't get too many people upset with me for saying that). Since you want to use it as a server mostly, I say a distro that starts out small but can be expanded, like Gentoo (gentoo is all compiled, so although it doesn't show it, 32 bit is supported, last I saw) or Slackware. However, both can be a little complex at times with upgrades.

But, some of the others which have more installed and supported apps will have more available "out of the box" tools to help with setup. CentOS, I have used. Also, Fedora and Ubuntu. And, they all have their positive points.

Really, it depends on your comfort level with Linux. But, the "major" distros might have more general support forums where others have run into the same problems you may encounter. So, personally, I'd stick to one of them. If you know CentOS, you might want to stick with that.

But, as a server... You might not even want to run X at all.

Thanks for the link, its a pretty nice page to read all the info on the distros. I am new to Linux, have been using it for about 2 months now but am learning pretty fast so I would probably lean towards the bare bones stuff and learn my way through most of the commands and arguments I don't already know.

Since you asked, I think you will be well suited with Debian and Xfce as the desktop environment. It is a very stable distro mainly used on servers. Xfce is a very lightweight and stable that has an easy to get used to environment. This area is of course up to the end users personal tastes. Debian is geared more to the experienced users but since you say that you used linux on your servers the power curve shouldn't be that bad. Debian is also the leader in package management.

I also recommend OpenSUSE to people that are beginning in linux, I've tested it, very user friendly.

Just keep in mind that once you pick out a distro, you also have a choise in desktops (Gnome, KDE, Xfce... many others). If you find one of them you like then switching/testing out different distros will be easier for you. Think of it this way;

The Distro is the backend. http://www.debian.org/
The desktop is the frontend.http://www.xfce.org/

If you have been using CentOS for two months, use that for the Pentium III system. Basically, any distribution will work for any computer.

I disagree that Debian is the best package management. You are still confined to what the maintainer thinks you should have. The best way and the only way to get a good experience of Linux is downloading source code, compile, and install. Distributions that does this are Gentoo, Arch, and Gobo just to name a few.

IMHO, if you are serious learning Linux, consider using Gentoo. If you are serious working for corporations that uses Linux, use CentOS. If you dislike Redhat's file organization and its init script syntax which are System V standards, Debian provides a different file organization and different init script syntax. Debian uses BSD style. Gentoo uses BSD style.

Zenwalk is not bad for older pc's like your PIII. you will have a very responsive system with that on it. it uses XFCE desktop manager and it is based on Slackware.

Hi,

I have been using Debian for already 5 years now,
and I recommend it. One reason is that it is really
free, not as mandriva which is sort of half-free;

another reason is a steady support:

the debian chat has everyday about 700 people on line
and many experts there are willing to help.
without this last feature I would have problems

(this is by the way one of the reasons why I have
moved to debian from mandriva)

my initial RAM was 2*512, i think this makes no prob at all

I had some troubles with videocards, and all this
(both with Mandrake and Deb), but worked it through.

hope it helps

stef

Here is the update: I installed Centos 5.3 32-bit but had errors loading Operating System. I got the message at the end of the install stating that the OS was installed successfully, but instead of booting I got the signature "Error Loading Operating System" in the top left corner of the screen. Any idea what the problem can be?

That depends where you are getting that message. If you are getting when GRUB, an OS boot loader, tries loading CentOS, you will have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst. This happens if the distribution selected the wrong options when compiling the kernel. Certain options in the kernel makes booting to IDE hard drives unreliable. The main problem is the latest kernels are emulating IDE through SCSI commands which means the order that IDE, SATA, and SCSI devices are found is not the same what the BIOS sees in its listings. Lately, I am seeing this happen with the latest distributions like Ubuntu and several others.

Your setup can still work, but you have to manually boot into it through GRUB console which is not hard to use even for a novice user. The following steps should help you through it.

1) At GRUB, high light the OS that you want to boot to. If GRUB comes up with just a black screen that looks like a console or a command line interface, more steps have to be taken.
2) Hit e
3) Hit e on the line that reads kernel.
4) Note down the whole. Use arrow keys to move the cursor to get the whole line.
5) Hit ESC or ENTER
6) Hit e on the line that reads initrd
7) Note down the whole line
8) Hit c to enter into console
9) type root(hd<TAB> and pick a drive
10) add a comma and <TAB> then pick a partition
11) add ) to finish the syntax and hit ENTER. It will switch to that drive, so you can use cat to list files in directories or use the kernel command.
12a) assuming you are on the correct drive and correct partition, type kernel whatever_you_noted_in_ step_3 and hit ENTER
12b) If you are not in the correct drive and correct partition, go back to step 9. How you know this is with the use of cat and TAB completion.
13) assuming you are on the correct drive and correct partition, type initrd whatever_you_noted_in_ step_4 and hit ENTER
14) type boot and hit ENTER

It should boot into your installation of Linux. If it gets to a certain point that it can not access a certain mount point or does not recognize a file system, then your /etc/fstab is incorrectly configured. If your setup includes FAT and/or NTFS partitions and /etc/fstab uses UUID, booting will not work well. I suggest change /etc/fstab to use LABEL. This means you have to specify the label during formating the partition or use the file system administrating utilities to specify a label after the partition has been formatted.

Distributions that do not have this issue is Gentoo and Sabayon. Sabayon is slow on any setup because its eye candy effects penalizes performance. I have found installing Sabayon is easy and provides a reliable setup after installing on any setup that uses IDE or SATA. Installing programs after installing Sabayon is quirky. I strongly recommend Gentoo from start to end. Installing Gentoo is tedious but easy. Gentoo on your setup will take 24 hours or more to install for desktop use. For just NFS or SAMBA use, it will be about a few hours or less and it will not take a lot of space.

That is good info. Thanks for your reply. First, how can I get to GRUB if the very first thing I see when I turn on the pc is the (old 2000)Dell splash, and then the computer shows "Error loading operating system" in the upper left corner of the screen...Can I bypass this to get to GRUB?

I used to run Ubuntu 7.04 quite successfully on a P111 with 512Mb, you get it here if you are interested:
http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/feisty/

Yes, I'm very interested in this. I will download it and try to install in tonight. Since GRUB boot loader does not even appear to load, I think I need to try something else. A big thank you to Electro for trying to help.