Best Light GUI Distro for Older CAD/CNC Workstation ?
 

I have an IBM Personal Computer 300 PL (6862-S4U) with :
Intel Pentium III - 547MHz & 192MB RAM (PC-100)
Maxtor HDDs (51369v3-176GB, 4D040H2-66B)
IBM 3.5" FDD, LG 18-40x CDROM (CRD-8400B)
S3 Trio 3D (86C366) & Crystal (CS4235-KQ)
Intel 10/100 Ethernet (SB82558B)
Intel PCI (FW82371EB)
2 COM, 1 LPT, 4 USB ports.
IBM Thinkvision LCD Monitor (6734-AC0)
Logitech Optical Mouse (Mx510)
Dell Keyboard (RT7D00)
Lexmark Laser Printer (E232)
HP Color Laserjet Printer (CP1518ni)
Agfa Snapscan Scanner (e26)
Kodak Easyshare Camera (C633)
I would like to have a dedicated workstation to run CAD/CAM & CNC Software. I'm not sure which Linux applications would be suitable for my puropse. I believe that 95%+ of the system is well supported. I tried installing Ubuntu 10.10 and it ended up hanging after loading the background image and before displaying the 1st dialog box (No error messages that I could see). I was running Windows XP Pro & AutoCAD Lite, MS-DOS 6.22 & TurboCNC. Due to an unscrupulous vendor, Windows Update now rejects my system (Very bad, on sooo many levels...) Because I would like a dedicated single purpose workstation should I compile my own kernel & packages? I'm not sure how complicated that process would be any more as I haven't used Unix in over 15 years !!! Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Mark.
P.S. I'm sorry in advance if I've posted in the wrong forum.

Your best bet is to check out http://distrowatch.com/

Cheers,

Josh

Anything with a "lite" GUI and a small footprint:

Arch (for the more seasoned users) http://www.archlinux.org/
Xubuntu (litew8 Ubuntu) http://www.xubuntu.org/
Fedora LXDE (also litew8 Fedora) http://spins.fedoraproject.org/lxde/

Tried these on a P3/320Mb/10Gb

All ran like a train...

Of course...if you put the engine of a Lamborghini in a Citroën "Deux Cheveaux" (the tin can) - you'll end up with a situation like that :D

Try one of the lite ones. There is lighter than that, but these are too much geared towards specific needs.

Eh, it's like riding a bike, the models change, but you still have the pedals... ;)
A good intro can be found here

http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/intro-linux.pdf

Luck!

Thor
PS : Arch lets you choose what GUI to use and how small/big the footprint ends up being, after the install, you end up with a bare-minimum system (console only, no GUI, no sound, no mouse,...), after that, it's up to you to install all the other bits. If that seems like too much homework, steer clear from Arch...though you can end up with a raizor sharp system...but it needs work to get it there.

Can't you do a memory upgrade?
If you want a distro for 192 MB, take a look at
VectorLinux, DSL, puppy,debian..
all with a light window manager like xfce.


Kind regards

Smells like Xubuntu, this from their site

wow, I forgot about these...

But...hey, who am I...

With such a small amount of RAM I wouldn't recommend one of the DEs, I would think that a WM, like one of the *boxes, IceWM or JWM, would fit better. Therefore I would recommend Slackware, it comes with Fluxbox pre-installed and can be really lightweight.

Debian with xfce4: 66MB, measured with htop.

I'm running Archbang on a pentiumII portege 7000CT lappy with 160mb ram, 266mhz, with 4gb hdd and it runs great
http://archbang.org/

The crucial point is the 192MB: Ubuntu recommends 384! Possibilities are Slackware (using the Fluxbox window manager), Vector Light (with Icewm), and perhaps Dreamlinux (with the Xfce desktop). All are said to run in 128MB.

@ DavidMcCann :

Not really...as I mentionned before, there are at least three distros (the three I tried, there are more, believe me) that run quite happyly in these "confines".
Best way is to test them out.
Xubuntu, for example, runs excacly like her big sister, but if more frugal. Puppy barely needs more that 128Mb...
The choice (it seems) it yours. And...hey, it you tried one and dont like it, re-install an other one right over it... :p

Thor

Thank You to all who replied...
 

I would like to thank all of you who took time to reply to my post. I've got a better idea of what is most suitable for my needs.