I have a friend who has an older computer that really crawls with windows 98. I think it's a pentium 133. I told him I would install linux as a dual boot so he could try it out and see if he liked it better. I was just wondering what you people think would be the best distro for a slower computer like this that wouldn't require too much configuration. I want it to be as fast as possible out of box. What do you think?

Any i386 distro would be ok, the thing that might bog it down is the window manager, you might want to look into one of the light weight ones for an old machine.

I want it to be similar to windows, so I was thinking of using kde or gnome. Perhaps gnome with a lighter window manager would be good? Which ones would you recommend?

Video and ram come into the question as well, if there is enough room on the hard drive then you should install all of them and try them out untill you find one that has the features you need and works on the hardware you have. Thats the best thing about linux, you get to pick what works best for you not what bill and co think is best for you.
I'm not that keen on recomending a particular window manager/gui because what rings my bell might disgust the next penguin to post here. I've seen so many flame wars about which one is best that I think its best to leave it up to everyone to make their own decision.

I'm presuming that your friend has about 32MB. Just take into account that if you run KDE or Gnome it will run very slowly. I use blackbox on my Pentium 133 which has 32MB RAM and that runs quiet well, but when I installed KDE and Gnome it was almost unuseable. I also used KDE for about 6 month with PIII 450MHz with 64MB RAM which was still failry slow. I've now upgraded the RAM to 256MB and it runs very quickly.

I would suggest maybe blackbox or another window manager but if your friend is used to Win95/98 and wants something similar he probably won't like it.

Cheers

For a slow machine I would suggest Debian, as it takes a bottom up approach (install just what is needed then add stuff) rather then the top down aproach favoured by other distros (install almost everything and let the user remove anything they don't want).

For a Windows like WM on that spec I would skip both KDE and Gnome and use plain IceWM - it even has a Start Button.

Thanks people, the last couple of posts gave me what I wanted, people's opinions on what is best to use. I asked my friend if I could install linux on it as a dual boot, and he's like "microsoft has a monopoly, so they must be the best". I know he's just saying that to be difficult, but I don't think he's going to let me install linux . Well, thanks for the suggestions anyways

not tryin to be nasty but.... f**k 'em

I would agree as to what has been said before.

If i was setting up a low-mem machine i would use one of the following distro's as IMO they allow you to *most easily* install a bloatless system

Debian - stable or testing
slackware 8.0
or some derivative of slackware such as zipslack or peanut linux.

a base debian install will be about 90 megs. once u add compiler and all other necessary utils and libs + window manager, xfree86, your looking at someting like 3-400mb's

As previously posted i would recommend either

IceWM
BlackBox
Windowmaker

as your desktops. if yuo got a little but more ram and want it to look nice i would go for enlightenment.

What's your point?

My thoughts exactly - hence the edit of the original post. No flames please people in response to the above post.

cheers

Jamie...

If The post that is left remaining is any indication. I dont think he was flaming anyone on this board, i think he was expressing discust at the fact that the original poster's friend would not let him install linux.



I don't think he was insulting anyone here so let's not get all excited people.

Chill Winston.

I've run Mandrake 7.1 and 8.0 on an old 486 Pentium and a 450mhz Pentium with 32 and 128 mbs of mem respectively. Both distros run faster and cleaner on the older box, go figure.

You should try Peanut Linux (www.peanutlinux.org)
It is small and fast but includes almost everything you need.

I would personally use either an older release of Redhat (6.x or 7.0), or Slackware.....

I'm actually a fan of IceWM as a lightweight window manager, even though I use KDE on my own system (duron 700/256mb ram).....