Hello everyone. This computer is giving me a headache. I purchased and old Compaq Presario 2100 desktop machine from a thrift store. When I turned it on, I found that it had Windows 98 installed on it. It has a Pentium 2 processor, 128 MB of RAM, VIA integrated sound, and an S3 integrated graphics chipset, either Savage 3/4 or ProSavage. So far, I have tried Ubuntu and Xubuntu (Dapper, Fiesty, Gutsy), Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, and a few other distros, but I just can't get this thing set up properly to make games with it. Every distro I tried left something out. Either there were features missing from the GUI, it wouldn't use the 3D chips for accelerated graphics, or it ran very slowly. Here are the features that I need:

1. Light-weight desktop environment, support for using pictures as background, easy to configure

2. It MUST be able to take full advantage of the old graphics chipset I have, as well as detect and configure all of the hardware in the computer. I would also like some kind of menu-driven setup program so I can change the setting if I don't like what the OS chose for me.

3. It must use Debian packages (APT, Synaptic) or have another suitable method of package management.

4. Must be able to install local packages, not require an Internet connection (phone company here charges an arm and three legs)

5. Must have a good number of pre-compiled packages available (500 or more)

6. Needs to run Blender without lagging

7. Needs to have all the necessary tools for software development (either already included, or available for download), this includes the ability to compile programs from source without forcing me to play "200 Cryptic Options" or "Decipher That Config File" to get them running correctly.

If such a distro exists, I would really like to know what it is and how to set it up. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me.

Read the Megathread

Vector Linux
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

BeaFanatIX
http://bea.cabarel.com/

PCFluxBoxOS
http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ease_id=538615

Luit Linux
http://luitlinux.sarovar.org/

Saturday morning - I've been up all night - your kidding right?
You want to turn an old beat-up Volkswagen into a Ferrari, and you don't want the phone company involved? And 400 gallons of free gas to boot? I think I'll go to bed....

Some of what you are seeking is going to be limited by the computer hardware--not the operating system. For starters, some versions of Linux may have trouble with only 128M of RAM. To keep it in perspective, I have a P-III with 192M RAM and it seems to handle most Linux versions quite nicely.
If I were setting up that computer, I would start by installing the maximum RAM that the motherboard will accommodate.

Will the machine boot from a CD? If not, that's going to limit your choices.

It can do a lot more then boot from a CD. The thing came with 52x Memorex CD reader/writer that works like a dream and all the distros that I have tried really like it. I currently can not afford that much RAM for it. I purchased it for three reasons: I needed a computer, it was cheap, and I want to write games for Linux. You see, I want to make games that use as little RAM and processing power as possible, but still rank right up there with today's hottest games. I want to bring more to Linux then tetris and mario clones, strategy games that take months to learn, and resource heavy FPS games that include very little of what some commercial games have, including the ability to run just fine with fewer resources.

And to iacook, you listed Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux. I clearly stated in my first post that I have already tried Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux, which shows me that you didn't take the time to read my post. However, I will check out some of the links you have listed.

And to CouchMaster, yes I want to turn a beat up junker into high performance luxury car, and I know it can be done with Linux because I have seen Linux based operating systems do amazing things. I never thought I would see Linux running on ipods or xboxes, but it has been done. I also thought it was impossible to install Linux on an old PowerMac, but some distros have ports that work flawlessly. So I am confident that there is a distro out there with all the features I seek. Note that I did not mention anything about the entire operating system being ready to run. I don't care if I have to compile additional pieces, just as long as the "installer" can handle most of it by itself without an Internet connection.

Also, as far as memory is concerned, I can certainly try to put in more memory, but like I said before, I want create games that will truly break the mold, running on very few resources, but still rock. Also, only certain things have to be true 3D, as there are plenty of ways to fake it.

And yes, I am crazy, for those of you who are probably thinking that.

Well, I like your craziness, man. It is refreshing, after all the whining from people who don't know how to type googlelinux on their keyboards ;-)

OK, I don't think what you seek exists but maybe Linux from Scratch, or Slackware, or Gentoo...Maybe ZenWalk?
Even if you build your own OS by compiling though you still run into things like "blender without bogging down", "no internet connection", "500 pre-complied packages" etc.

You need the max ram that the motherboard will support, and, if memory serves me 450 or 500mhz was the max for a PII cpu and you will need every bit of that too. And you can't compare ipods and xboxes to your computer because their guts (motherboards, ram, cpu's, if you will) are engineered for the specific task at hand with current technology.

By all means try it! I hope you succeed and don't end up thinking that you wasted a big portion of your time. From long years of mechanical engineering your concept is correct - simple is always better - but it is always simple. Kickbutt games need kickbutt processing power and the ram to use it.

And last but not least, you probably already have an idea of what 'dependency hell' is - get used to living there...

zenwalk is zippy, stable and includes C libraries and other languages for all the compiling you need and it has a pretty good package manager (Netpkg) you could install fluxbox on it and it'll only take up 34 mb of RAM.... thats the best iv seen on my P3..

could also try fluxbuntu and disable all the crap that startsup when u boot but *buntu is kinda slow the best i can think of is zenwalk (zenwalk.org)

Thanks for the suggestion jklslvch (interesting name). Zenwalk works pretty good, but I have encountered issues with installing additional software from external media (my USB hard drive). Also, it doesn't seem to recognize that my old graphics chip set is capable of 3D and transparency, as these are clearly done by the slow CPU alone, rather then sharing the load with the GPU (the "accelerator chip").

Now I'm going off the deep end with this. I have recently discovered that applications written in assembly (either mostly or completely) are considerably faster then anything written in C or C++. So I got to thinking, what if the whole operating system was written in assembly specifically for my processor and graphics chipset? One major problem is that assembly is outdated, hard to learn, and I can't find very many books on the subject. So now I am looking for a program to translate all the source code into assembly. If it works, I might be on the verge of creating a new version of a Debian based OS optimized for the oldest hardware still available.

Yes, I absolutely must have those lovely .deb packages. APT is the best package management system I have ever seen. Easy to use, easy to configure (to some extent), it just plain works. I don't have to worry about the system suddenly crashing because I updated package "whatever" to an incompatible version. It immediately shows me what installing, upgrading, downgrading, or removing a package will do to my system. A drunken monkey could probably use it with a proper GUI (Synaptic, Kynaptic, aptitude, etc).

Anyway, even though I don't even fully understand C++ (still learning), I already know that just copying files into various directories can accomplish great things. I'll try a few things and see if the computer survives. ;-)

If you really get into this, you are going to want to do optimization at all kinds of levels. Once you build your code, you will want to strip down the executable image to have only the bare information to have it run. You may want to compress the image to make it fit on small equipment, and be creative about many things.

On the kernel front, you may want to pick some target hardware objects and build specifically for those classes of machines and remove support for newer, faster machines and peripherals, otherwise the kernel gets too large. Perhaps you will need multiple small kernels to support various classes of systems.

I agree, for my own use, I use apt-get and .deb packages whenever possible. Given that, why don't you start with a Debian base? I have seen Debian systems in the past that are small enough to load from a few floppy disks. I have also seen big systems that fill multiple DVDs so Debian scales, very small to very large very well. That may be worth taking into account. You also have the choice of using existing Debian binary packages or you can rebuild as many packages as you want from Debian sources. In short, it makes a great starting point.

Whatever you decide, I wish you well. Don't let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do, but do consider the advice of others when it comes to having to anticipate and overcome issues in specific areas.

You guys might be wondering why I haven't posted in a long time on this particular thread. That's because I was busy trying to translate the entire source code for Debian Etch into a assembly, then do various optimizations by hand while flipping through a large book that's about three inches thick and ways half a ton. I spent many hours working on it, but when I fire it up, it blows up. When I boot up, everything goes fine right to where GRUB transfers control to the system kernel. Then the text starts racing across the screen, the CD drive starts opening and closing in an endless loop, then I get something about seek errors and a really loud whine from the fan on the power supply. Then lovely colors start flashing on the screen and it starts beeping. I tried to find problem, but no matter what I do, it just won't work. It's turned out to be a bigger headache then I ever imagined. I'm sure those who programmed assembly fluently back in the "good old days" had much higher IQ scores then Einstein. So I got the default Debian Etch installed, but now I'm running Fluxbox with various add-ons to make it a complete desktop environment. My file manager of choice is now Thunar, which is very cool to use, especially with the "custom actions" feature. Now my slow system doesn't seem so slow anymore. I would like to have a little more eye-candy though. I also altered my xorg config file, and now the 3D is good enough to use Blender for small things, like people and vehicles, but when I run I try to do a landscape, it slows way down. I found another computer in the trash yesterday, but the only thing I could use out of it was the hard drive. I will now try to tinker with Linux from scratch using this hard drive and see what I can do. In the mean time, I'm just happy to have a Windows manager up and running.

if you like asm OS try Menuet OS.
ASM is good in terms of performance.. but on low-complex operations and it's tied to CPU architecture. C++/C..etc. is portable as it describes logical operations and not cpu instructions(unless you not messing with arch-specific fnc/commands) but compiled code imho is less efficient. IMHO is not worth (unless this is a specific device port intended to be used only on it) to use asm nowdays.

PS: use proper X dirver for savage(check by $ glxinfo|grep direct) and if compiz-fuzion support this chip use it to accelerate window manager.