Looking for a Distro that'll run on this machine
 

I have an old Everex machine (don't ask) that has only 432.3 MB (yes, Megabytes--yet it somehow ran Windows Vista till it got a virus) and an Via Esther 1500MHz processor. It has an 80gb harddrive.

I'm looking for a small, lightweight yet full distro that's easy to use and fast to learn. i've tried Ubuntu, it works but runs slow, PeppermintOS was fast at first but then got slow and I didn't like that I could click 'Remove' 5 time, restart and the webapps wouldn't go away.

I'm still learning Linux and I'm using this desktop as away to learn while I also learn Ubuntu on my laptop. Loving it so far, much better than Windows imho.

tinycore linux is a very small distro with gui.

netBSD is said to run on anything.

Essentially you need a Linux distribution with a lightweight GUI and that doesn't run too many superfluous services. There are a number of preconfigured distributions like Puppy and DSL that will do that. Or you can take an existing core distribution like Debian or Slackware and do a lightweight install. (Several tutorials exist around the web)

You say you're new to Linux and still learning. That makes me think you might be better off sticking to a similar distribution to Ubuntu that you have on your laptop. Xubuntu is essentially the same as Ubuntu but uses the lower foot print XFCE rather than GNOME. Might be worth a try as that way you can keep a reasonably consistent environment to learn in across both machines.

Xubuntu? That sounds and looks good. I'll burn a CD of right away.

Yes, I'm still learning. I've got the terminal down a little bit--like I uninstalled OpenOffice and installed LibreOffice, but I'm still learning about it in general, like how to find software that's not in the software center, how to use programs that look different than Windows, etc.

But thank you for that suggestion. I can see this is going to be a good group to chat with and it really breaks the Linux stereotype!

Xubuntu should do well, but if it still feels a bit sluggish you can try CrunchBang, Dreamlinux, Salix, or Zenwalk. They all run in 256MB and with processors having half the speed of yours. All (including Xubuntu) ran fine for me.

lubuntu, slitaz maybe vector.

Thank you, Jefro. I had just looked at looked, downloaded and burnt lubuntu onto a CD. If it works on this old desktop, I'm going to install it on my laptop too.

I do plan on buying a Windows machine since I need Windows for school, but I love the feel of Open Source so far.

I would recommend the Salix OS Fluxbox edition.

I'm always suprised at the 'minimal' distros that people recommend for some systems.

I run debian xfce (or aptosid xfce) on a machine with far less power than that. A P3 866/256MB/40GB HDD machine.

IMO a lot of standard linux distros with a lighter DE (Xfce, LXDE, fluxbox, etc) would run more than happily on that machine. Debian, slackware, arch, gentoo, possibly fedora would all work well (I cant say for sure with fedora, its been a while since I tried it). I wouldnt recommend arch or gentoo for somebody who is fairly new, the learning curve is just to high IMO. Slackware or debian would be fine if you can get them installed, which isnt that hard.

If you've used ubuntu then debian would be easier to master than slackware, it uses a lot of the same tools. You can get software centre installed, which I never use, I prefer the command line or synaptic to software centre. But you have the option. ;)

Xubuntu....should work. It used to be a right pig, it was pretty much as bad as ubuntu for RAM/CPU use. I've heard its got a lot better lately though. I'm not going to d/l a xubuntu .iso to check that though, canonical is rapidly losing any support I've given them in the past. Lubuntu should work well, but Lxde just doesnt do anything for me, and its not worth the minimal decrease in RAM use that Lxde has over Xfce. For me anyway.