HI,
I Have an 2 GB Hard Disk. and i would like to run linux on it. But I tried with Fedora 8 but the H/D is not enough for it. Can any one tell me of a good Distribution i could use. One that has a GUI is what i am looking for. basic functionality but good Administrative tools also should be available.

Kind regards
napster

Maybe Debian with the base install and Fluxbox? That should be pretty small.

Slackware 10.2 with no Tex, Emacs, Dev tools, KDE, Kernel source, FAQs, or big X packages like GIMP. Use XFCE or Fluxbox for the desktop. I'd almost go for Slack 11 in the same configuration, but I think you'd probably still run out of room. Once you get most of your desktop in, you could try for the dev tools and maybe the kernel source. I did this once on a 4 GB drive and had about 1.5 gigs left over, but I put in a lot of extra fonts and media stuff.

Hi,
First of all thanks alot for the quick reply. I've been looking at some distro's what about Mutagenix or Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox are they good for my purpose ?

Kind regards,
napster

2 GB HD .....

Is it not possible to have a new HD a bit new..?? of at least 5GB? then you'll have choice to install what you like... Fedora or Ubuntu are two good choices of my experience.

baig has a good point. Are you really trying to install this on a HD or is it a 2 gig USB stick? I realize that if it was a USB stick then you wouldn't be able to get much more than 2 gigs, but if it's a HD then you could get a bigger one for next to nothing.

You could try installing Feather or DSL and subsequently adding XFC on top of it. But with only 2 GB you will have to "outsource" /home /tmp /var and maybe some other system dirs to another disk or a network drive.

Wow I can't believe no one has mentioned more about the smaller distros yet.

DSL (Damn Small Linux) is really small at ~50MB and would run fine on a 2GB hard drive.

Puppy is nearly twice as big as DSL but is still really small at ~95MB. Puppy runs a much more up to date kernel and has a bunch of nice, easy to use features that make it my choice over DSL every time.

Mepis (anti-X version) is another smaller distro that should work on a small hard drive.

They are all small downloads so check em out yourself and see which one you like. If you don't want to bother experimenting, just use Puppy.

Hi,
Yes I checked these one's out. But arnt they Live CD versions. I am not looking for a Live Cd version. Im looking a for some thing like a CD version but can be installed on the PC that has 2GB. Anything out there ?

Kind regards,
Roger

Puppy has a feature call the "universal installer" that will install Puppy anywhere you want it. I can't speak for the others.

The majority if not all of the mentioned distros are live CDs which are ALSO INSTALLABLE on your hard drive.

I might have brought up Puppy or DSL but the OP said that he wanted some good administrative tools. DSL has next to none, and Puppy has only a very minimal set. If napster were to take my suggestion, he would have more command-line tools than ship with most "regular" distros. Napster, you might get some of these smaller "live" distros to install into 2 GB, but I have noticed that nearly all of them are deficient in some way or another, that's how they got them so small. I don't hate them or anything, I use DSL for formatting new drives all the time, and Puppy is kind of cute, but neither have very many tools. Using my method, I'm certain you could get all the admin stuff you want, plus a fairly complete development chain.

You may be able to use Zenwalk.

http://www.zenwalk.org/

i guess damn samll linux will be gr8 for u....
do u have some background knwledge of linux???
then u can make ur own distro acccording to ur need with
LFS(linux from scratch)

I guess the question becomes what kind of "admin tools" is the OP looking for?

Certainly the smaller distros are lacking some features but Puppy is more complete than you might think, plus you can always use the package manager to download new features easily.

Nap-dude what do you mean by "admin tools"?