Hi, guys. I need help and advice which Linux to install on my old Pentium 2. It is needed only to surf the internet, nothing else. All suggestions are welcome

Welcome!

Can you give us more specs for this machine? (Memory, Disk, CPU speed, etc.)

Hi marisp27; welcome to LQ and the FUNpuzzles of Linux Here's something: (tho 2yo)
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...2-a-4175548577

Depending on the 'model' of the computer, can you boot a CD or USB?
(are you familiar with 'bios boot order'? Next is: 'burning' .iso to CD/USBstick)

You'll find infinite-tons of info by web-searching; the 'magic' is narrowing it down by 'just the right' *keywords*!

Best wishes! Let 'us' know how things go... (I'm sure it will work)

Not much info yet. Nothing on the computer itself or hard disc but will give you all the info as soon as I get it to run. thanks

@marisp

You probably have just taken a Linux class and looking at delving into the OS to explore further into what benefits you could get from working with Linux. You are welcome. However, with the information that you have provided, you might not really enjoy Linux running on Pentium 2, not because it won't work but it would be too slow and with limited features. If you search online you would find out that most Linux distribution would work better on at least 1.0 GHz processor, 512 RAM and 20GB HDD. The maximum speed for Pentium 2 is between 233-266 MHz, unless you were referring to Pentium Core 2.


All the best and keep exploring.

I understand your need. Pentium II can still run many linuxes but to my experience I was never disappointed with Absolute Linux talking about old hardware machines.
Not only that you are capable of surfing the internet but also it has many applications and a complete set of office suite. Only that you need to stick to the practical rule: To avoid headache match the OS version with the birth year of the hardware. Therefore, for Pentium II (I have done this successfully without problem) try install Absolute Linux v. 12.2. You can download the the .iso images here. There are two CDs, onle for application and the other for extra applications that you can install and use too.

There is an installation guide here.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

m.m.

I'd strongly recommend AntiX, which is specifically designed for computers like yours. They recommend a Pentium II, although it can manage on a Pentium I.

The real question is how much RAM you have. I've seen AntiX running a browser (Midori) in 120MB, plus video memory.

Linux on a Pentium 2 would probably best left at no GUI, command line only. About 12 years ago I loaded Debian on a P3 with maybe 256MB of ram. It was unusable because of slowness.

Give Anti-X a spin on that machine. Anti-X was designed for older pc's.

http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

You could install a VM on your Pentium 2 or burn Anti-X to a CD or DVD and run it Live to see if you like it.

https://www.htpcbeginner.com/install...ox-on-windows/

While I agree with AntiX as the choice to try with a Pentium II, you may not be happy with your Internet experience. Besides the sloth of such an old CPU running a GUI and the limited RAM it can support, modern web software expects expects surfers to have CPUs with sse2 instructions, which no Pentium II has.

I have to second some of the above. The machine might be usable as a minimal desktop, but I would experiment with it as a headless or non-gui (no xwindows at all) server. It might do well as a mail server, dns server, vpn endpoint, low traffic router or bridge. Although slow, it might do as a NAS server (ftp, sftp, nfs, sshfs... I would think not cifs or iscsi with that CPU) if you can add disk.

The speed issue as a server will be because of slow components and low memory for caching. The GPU falls right out of the equation if the video is not used.

I used such a machine to run streamcicle to serve my music over network at my house. It worked well for years.

I hesistate for a moment because of the large number of responses you've made over the years, but do you realize how inadequate a P2 really is? No offense. I just don't know how long you've been using PCs.

Yeah a P2 is indeed inadequate. No offense taken; thanks.

I should of given more detail. OP could install a VM on another pc that he has (if he has another machine that's not as old) to try Anti-X for the first time.

I'm quessing that this old P2 has Windows XP installed on it but we will never know w/o the machines specs.

You could run a Live Linux CD and run 'lspci' to get the information about the machine.
The command free -m will show the RAM.

What os is on it? Windows XP?

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-...linux-or-unix/

I ran Puppy Linux "Classic Pup 2.14x" for a couple of years on a PII with 192 MB RAM, 6 GB hard disk. It runs straight from RAM and the 2.14x series is targeted at old hardware.

It was far from fast, but as good as you could hope for, other than installing Windows 98 SE (which is the system it was shipped with) ... If you could FIND it ... and then dealing with the myriad challenges of trying to run that OS 20 years after its expiry date ;-) ...

As mentioned a couple of times already, the amount of RAM you have on your P2 computer will be the main determinant as to which solutions are optimal. Let us know the specs as soon as you find out.