stupid newbie questions about linux
 

:newbie: :newbie: :newbie:

I have some questions how Slackware 8.0 would run on my machine. Right now it's running Windows 98 SE quite nicely (if that can be said about any machine) and I want to be sure before I repartition my 6 GB HDD since I don't have another drive available of suitable size for using linux.

This machine:
HP Vectra 515MCx 5/100
Intel Pentium MMX 200 MHz processor
80 MB EDO RAM
6 GB IDE HDD
4x4x24x CD-RW
ATI Rage Pro Turbo PCI 8 MB video card
3Com TC515-TX ISA 10/100 ethernet card
Lucent WinModem ISA v.90 modem
Creative Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 ISA sound card

I have once installed this version of slackware on another system, a K6-2 333 MHz machine w/ 64 MB of RAM and it was great when outside of X but when inside it absolutely cralled because of the excessive swap file access. The same machine was surprisingly fast with Windows 98 SE installed on it. I used the complete install (or w/e it is on the slackware disc) on that machine so I am assuming that is what I did wrong, because it loaded a LOT of stuff when I booted it, the screen would completely fill w/ text 3 or 4 times before I got the login prompt.

Am I correct in assuming that a leaner installation would make this machine run linux and x with speed comparable to my windows installation?

Also, I could never figure out how to get PnP ISA cards to work in linux so I would like to be able to get my sound and lan cards to work (the modem is less important because I only use it when the lan internet connection goes down)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks much,
Noah Putman

The less you have running, the better a computer will run, of course. I've not used Slack, but I've read you can configure a pretty light system. Be sure not to run daemons you don't need.

The problem you had with the K6-2 might have been your window manager... KDE and GNOME tend to use a lot of resources. There are lighter WMs to use, such as fluxbox and others.

Besides that, the K6 line really wasn't that great.

Linux would run like a champ on that machine. I'm not quite sure if ISA support is still compiled in modern kernels since they're kind of old. Everytime I need Linux on an old machine I start with a distro from the period and upgrade from there.

Although.. try a modern one... you might get beter support for your cards now.

I run Slackware 8.1 on an AMD k6-2/266 MHz machine with 128MB RAM, a crappy old SoundBlaster Pro, an old s3 ViRGE DX 4 mb vid card, a Macronix NIC, a generic modem (not used), and a 48X LiteOn CD-ROM. I use XFCE as a window manager, but I also have blackbox which is really fast. Gnome and KDE suck resources like a Hoover. If you're going to put Slack on it, 8.1 comes with XFCE as an option so start with that one instead of KDE or Gnome and if you want to leaner, just download Blackbox or Fluxbox or whatever else you want. Hope this helps.:D