Which "light" Distro for Newbie with ancient Laptop?
 

I am very new to Linux and could really use some help choosing the right distribution.
I am looking for a Linux distribution which is very "light" and uses very few resources.
I have a Pentium 1 laptop with 64MB Ram and only 2GB Harddrive.
I would like to use this laptop for surfing, Wordprocessing and torrents. It will be in a windows Network and get its internet connection through a switch connected to an ADSL Modem. It is important that windows PCs can access at least some of the Laptops harddrive (thats samba server i need right?)

I have very limited experience with Linux (and most of that is based on Suse Linux Servers) so it is vital that the recommended distro has good documentation.
Please understand I dont want you to walk me throught it but I do need help in finding the relevant information, there is just so much out there...
I would really appreciate if you can state why you recommend a certain distro and whether you used it yourself.
Thank you very much for your inputs!

Search for one here:

http://distrowatch.com/search.php

Thanks for your fast reply. The recommended site seems like a great way to discover whats out there.
However it is not really what i meant. By checking all the appropiate tickboxes for my case I ended up with well over 30 possible distros.
I came here for some guidance based on experiences rather blindly picking distros and trying them out. Even if I had my options limited to over 30 I could spend weeks finding out which one does what I need...

OK. Check out:

AUSTRUMI

Puppy

DSL (Damn Small Linux)

Xubuntu

Why those? Have you used them before? Will 64MB RAM be enough to run them? Will they automatically recognise the hardware of an ancient laptop?

Which file do I need when downloading Damm small Linux? dsl-3.2-syslinux.iso or current.iso?

I have used AUSTRUMI. Its light and fast. I have never used it on an old laptop. The others are ones that have been recommended by other people with similar problems to yours. Puppy also might like your hardware better.

<edit>You haven't gotten a lot of responses because most people don't have to worry about having an old laptop to install Linux on. There are hundreds of distributions, and the chances that you will find a person on here for every distribution is slim. Most people will simply recommend things that seem to be effective and/or popular.</edit>

I'm a big fan of Puppy Linux myself....works great on my old machines. Of course I do think you should consider a RAM upgrade...not much, maybe another 64 stick or something. Puppy has some pretty lightweight and quick apps built in but some of the larger ones (like the Seamonkey web browser for example) are gonna load rather slowly on 64MB of RAM. I know Puppy can handle all the things you want although I am not 100% sure on using it as a Samba server. It does have a Samba client so you can access Samba shares. But I figure someone has developed a Samba server package for Puppy....the community and documentation for Puppy is top notch!

I have DSL running on a pentium I 133 40MB RAM. It's no rocket, but it works. Firefox is hopeless but the dillo browser works ok. Samba ? Can't see why this wouldn't work, then again no windows machines here to test the theory.

No promises. Check for posts on your exact hardware on the distribution specific sites. Some fiddling was need with my Dell Latitude P133. The solutions were found at the DSL forum.

Not sure. Read this
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/i...ong_version%29

I can tell you current worked for me. Then again I did a type of net install.

If that machine is capable of running puppy it might well be worth a try as it's gaining quite a following.. Be warned it's well below puppy's recommended specs.

I have tried Puppy Linux and was impressed with its ability to "just" run. I hae however 1 impoartnat problem. It does not seem to find the onboard network card. when using the auto search funktion it recommended one but that one didnt seem to work. What is the procedure in Linux for something like that? Under windows I would go into the hardware manager and look for the name of the card, google for the driver and install it with a right mouse click...
:newbie: :)

The auto function will basically go through each driver individually. I highly recommend finding some info on the chipset of your NIC...RealTek, 3COM, tulip, and so on. Doing so will make the driver selection process easier and narrow it down so you won't be there for 2 hours finding a driver that will work. In the event you don't know you can at least narrow things down some...for example, if it's a straight 10/100 RJ45 wired connection you can obviously skip all wireless drivers. At first it can be a little bit of a pain (although not much worse than installing drivers for Windows) but once its set it'll keep your settings. There is also ndswrapper which will allow you to load a Windows driver, assuming you have the disk for it.

I got this PC especially to use it with linux. Its old and I have no drivers for it.
I thank you for the tip that auto will just go through the list but how can I find out about the chipset? Yes its RJ45 but which one? In windows I would use the Device manager to give me this basic information. Where do i go for that kind of info in Linux?

Chances are that you will spend much more time with trying to find a suitable driver and installing it than the time of trying an other distro to see if it recognizes the card "out of the box".

DSL linux is only 60MBytes, it does not take much time to download, burn it, and boot up from it, just to see if it more suits your needs.
If dsl supports the card, you can easily install it on your notebook by using its own dektop menu (there is an "install on hdd" menu item there; you just need to ensure that you have free space on your hdd for it.)
Dsl linux is a really minimalist distro, and I think it requires significantly less disk space than puppy linux.

I use dsl on a Toshiba notebook (P1 120 with 48Megs of RAM), and it works fine. It recognized my pcmcia ethernet card immediately.

As for samba: it is available for dsl, too, however it is not a must. You may find it much easier to install winscp on your windows boxes and connect to your linux box using that.
Copying files by winscp is just a matter of dragging files from one window pane into the other. Besides, winscp only needs sshd, which is already installed on your linux box.

OK, good point. Ill try DSL in 2 hours or so.
Ill let you know what happened...

Well basically a simple Google search can help ya find out what's built in. Just Google the specs for the model/brand of the laptop and that's it.

DamnSmallLinux and Puppy have programs in the GUI menu for showing the recognized hardware. Search the menu for them under categories labeled 'system', 'tools', 'utilities', 'devices'...something like that. Otherwise, you can type in some commands at a commandline. lspci lists hardware, and lsmod lists the drivers that have been loaded.