fastest *nix

twistedrhymes · 06-13-2005, 10:55 PM

i have an old comp sitting here that i want to use as a small web server that i can develop on (i'm tiered of waiting 30seconds per upload)

its a

celeron 400
256mb ram

no agp card (or slot)
it does alright! but is getting tiered and old..

i've had red hat 9 on there, and it ran like a dog.. just wondering what is the best *nix system i can put on there.. speed is the deciding factor, second to ease of use..

some say gentoo, but i was just wanting to get every else's opinion

twantrd · 06-13-2005, 11:53 PM

Did you turn off unnecessary services? How big did you set swap to be? I ran an emachine (333mhz, 256ram, 40gig hd) and it ran pretty well. I have debian and I love it.

-twantrd

twistedrhymes · 06-13-2005, 11:58 PM

not sure what i had running and didn't have running..
swap is double the size of the ram.. i think its 600mb.

i'll boot it up and run through it with you!

what are the main services i should have on?
i need, access to the net via my lan,
i'd also need apache

what else would i neeed on?

craigevil · 06-13-2005, 11:58 PM

1) Gentoo
2)Debian or Slackware

Gentoo involves a lot of compiling, not something you really want to be doing on a slow machine.

Debian is my favorite, but Slack is a great distro also.

chii-chan · 06-14-2005, 12:07 AM

I think the main problem is using GUI. Installing newer distro and running on GUI requires more RAM and processing power. You won't have that problem running only CLI. I installed older distro like Redhat 8.0 on my old computer, and running on lightweight window manager, WindowMaker. So, in conclusion, choose lightweight window manager if you want to run on GUI, and you may need to consider running on older distro, and yes, turn off all unnecessary services.

But some newer distro like Vector Linux is not bad for its speed