Light Linux ?

seanmaggs · 05-09-2004, 05:13 PM

Hey I was wondering what is the best software combonation to make Linux light and responsive. Right now, I use Red Hat Linux 9 and its a bit sluggish execution wise.

My Specs

600 MHZ Celeron
384 MB RAM
120 GB HD

I use Mozilla Firefox since when I had Windows it was a lot faster and more responsive than IE, since IE is wrapped in the OS.

I am looking to build my own PC with 2 17" LCDs, and make it a really great system.

I spec'd out the components and everything would cost me around $500 for the CPU unit and $700 for the LCDs.

Peacedog · 05-09-2004, 05:29 PM

your best bet would probably be to try some different window managers like fluxbox, blackbox, etc. until you find one that gives you the responsiveness your looking for. my personal choice of os is slack, you'll get alot of different opinions, again your best bet is try them and see for yourself.
good luck.

seanmaggs · 05-09-2004, 06:59 PM

I tried Flux but its kinda bland. Is there anyway I could color it up.

Peacedog · 05-10-2004, 06:32 AM

you could try changing themes, etc. have a look here for capabilities

http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/

and as i stated before, don't stop there, try several combinations until you find what you need.
good luck.

slakmagik · 05-10-2004, 05:28 PM

Which version did you try? 0.9.9 is a bit different from 0.1.14. And, yeah, themes. Or you could try any number of others - ice, xfce, windowmaker, whatever. If you want to go full tilt, try a different distro, as I understand RH is pretty sluggish for many. Or try turning off startup processes and whatnot. I would think with those specs it would do all right, though.

MS3FGX · 05-10-2004, 06:43 PM

Yeah, I think the problem here is Red Hat, Slackware would scream on a 600 MHz machine. I run KDE on a 450 MHz Slackware machine flawlessly.

Peacedog · 05-10-2004, 06:58 PM

Quote:

I run KDE on a 450 MHz Slackware machine flawlessly.

me too. one box is a pII 450(i trial different distros on that box), the other box is a pIII 766. kde runs w/no probs.

seanmaggs · 05-10-2004, 07:17 PM

KDE is pretty smooth on my machine, just got to update some of the syslinks on the icons and I am set. Thanks for the info.

Linux.tar.gz · 05-10-2004, 09:12 PM

I've just reinstalled Slack on my ten-years-old 486DX2-66 with 16M ram, and it works fine.
I've selected base system and network.

LavaDevil94 · 05-11-2004, 09:36 AM

Did that 486 come with a CD drive? Im curious because I have an old 486 w/o a CDROM drive, and Ive been looking for a distro that installs using a floppy. Does Slack do that?

seanmaggs · 05-11-2004, 10:42 AM

Stop Slackin off and find an answer. Google it.

dARkHunTEr · 05-11-2004, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by LavaDevil94
Did that 486 come with a CD drive? Im curious because I have an old 486 w/o a CDROM drive, and Ive been looking for a distro that installs using a floppy. Does Slack do that?

Just swap harddisks with another pc.

Linux.tar.gz · 05-11-2004, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LavaDevil94
Did that 486 come with a CD drive? Im curious because I have an old 486 w/o a CDROM drive, and Ive been looking for a distro that installs using a floppy. Does Slack do that?

Slack can do anything...

http://slackware.com/install/softwaresets.php

There is an old CD-drive on my self-made 486, connected to the soundcard, but i didn't used it to install. I booted from floppies, then i used a normal CD-drive as install source.
You can install from HD too, from a partition where you copied the slack-cd folders.
NFS install via network must be fun too (i havn't got the chance to do this yet

).