good lightweight (but with KDE) noob distro?
 

my freind wants me to put linux on his computer, he is not a programmer, a gamer, he does nothing but word processing and internet browsing on his computer, making him a perfect candidate for desktop linux.

I am looking for a distro that comes with KDE, but is not so bloated that it wont run on a pentium III 500mhz with 128 megs of ram. I may supliment his ram with some extra sticks i have lying around, but i still need a somewhat lightweight distro thats verry noob freindly.

PS; i was thinking about mandrake, but i am afraid that it will be too bloated. do any mandrake users know if its easy to trim the extra crap (like unneeded deamons) from it? also, does the install process allow you to bypass installing extra stuff you personally may not need?

hi there

try out redhat 9.0 on that configuration and u can customize th installation and install only required packages
and u close the unrequired services also
regards

debian sarge with kde 3.2
in my k6-2 works really fast much more than in other distros

KDE is bloated and slow as hell! avoid.

my freind is not advanced enough of a user to even attempt anything less than a desktop environment, so fluxbox is out of the question.

if not KDE then what should I use? i heard that gnome is more resource intensive than KDE, and XFCE is nice, but my experience with it is that its not nearly as noob freindly as kde or gnome.

xfce is a hell of a lot faster. p.s. what's "hard" about fluxbox? it's got a piss easy menu system and that's all there is to it.

hi

if u can go for another dsektop then

try out icewm
www.icewm.org

regards

You can Mandrake down to a fairly minimal install if you like, just choosing what's needed. Then again you will probably still end up with a CD-sized install. Maybe try Mepis/Knoppix as they are two fairly comprehensive and lightweight n00b-orientated distros. Main problem is that KDE and lightweight don't really mix and using fluxbox won't make very much difference if you don't cut out the bloat.

knoppix isn't lightweight! not in terms of actual running of it, it's slow, it just happens to be a liveCD.

Yes apologies, Mepis/Knoppix are not exactly lightweight. Problem is lightweight=minimal=(usually)not newb friendly.

I could have suggested DSL, Puppy, Feather, Bonzai etc, but these may not be suitable for a complete beginner, it depends.

What I meant about Knoppix was that even a slimmed down Mandrake/Suse etc install will usually run into 1gig or so, maybe a bit less. I suggested them, as you say, too because they are live cds and will give the guy a feel for linux in general before making a decision.

True.

Tho if the person could bare to live without KDE or GNOME, then slackware CD1 has everything else (including X and a range of WMs/DEs like flux or XFCE)

And "noob friendly" is very relative, some people find following a menu from a readme quite easy, some find it impossible.

hey what are we discussing here

lighweight distro or lightweight desktop???

regards

Both :)

hi there
so i do not think then this dicussion is leading us somewhere

becasue it will be helpfull to choose a distro first
variuos dektops can be tried on that

regards

>I am looking for a distro that comes with KDE, but is not so bloated that it wont run on a pentium III 500mhz with 128 megs of ram. I may supliment his ram with some extra sticks i have lying around, but i still need a somewhat lightweight distro thats verry noob freindly.

That's the question the answer is Suse 9.1 personal. IMHO and will be more than fine on that hardware. For Open Office slip in an extra 32 or 64MB of Ram.

G.