The best distribution for a small PC?
 

Hi,
I got an old 166 laptop with 80MB of Ram...
What would be the ideal distribution for that?

these types of posts have been fairly common, and many long time members will flame you for this :D

it all depends on your level of skills- you need something light- use the icewm windowmanager. slackware is good, but not extremly newbie friendly like mandrake is. The bottom line? anything- just make sure it's at your level and run lighter *less mem intensiv* programs - esp. gui ones.

titanium_geek

Yeah I know that I will be flamed ^_^

Well... I'm an intermediated user... Slackware... not for me... too complicated... Fedora... WAY TO SLOW TO INSTALL!

I know what I'm gonna do! Write my own linux! MUAHHHAHAHHA... XD

k- if slack is too advanced, then you won't be writing your own linux...

have you seen vector- it's slack based(yay!) newbie friendly (yay yay!) one cd install (yay!) supposed to be good on slower machines (yaaaaaaaaay!)

titanium_geek

Lol... I'll look at that...

And, yah... I already did my own distribution, but it won't boot. (the boot loader had some problems)

check out:
1) www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/
2) eedok.voidofmind.com/linux/chooser.html

Eh eh... nice Thanks

what did you get? (particularyly the first one)
if it's slackware I'll laugh.
:D
titanium_geek

Any distribution will work; just don't install everything under the sun!

"Just don't install everything under the sun!"
Wahh??

And I just got Ubuntu... but, it's another one that doesn't work!

on the second link- it has a list of distros and how compatible they are.

titanium_geek

Example of what I mean:

If you choose, say, Suse 9.3 and elect to install KDE, Gnome desktop, bind, Postfix, MySQL, Apache, etc. and have it all launch at startup, the first boot is going to end up in your having a bad day as you wait 3 hours for the thing to just boot up.

With any distro you choose on that machine, do a minimal install, and go with something lightweight (e.g., FVWM) for your window manager, and run only minimal services.

I know but... it's a DVD...

Would FC1 would be good on a 166MHz with 80MB of ram and a 2.1GB HDD??

Again: Any distro will do.

FC1 will work (well, as well as FC1 can work ;)), just don't install everything in the distribution; install only what you think you absolutely need, and add additional packages after you start running it and find you need to install more.

E.g., install the base system, a lightweight window manager, and maybe abiword, and add other packages as required. Skip mysql, postfix, etc. and don't think about running KDE on that system unless you want X to take many minutes to start.

Also, FYI: Suse is available on CD as well as DVD, or even via FTP. Don't let the lack of a DVD drive stop you. Finally, I'd go with a newer distro than FC1 to get the latest kernel version and security patches; again, just do a minimal/base install with whichever distro you want to try.