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Linux Distro that doesn't use a lot of resources

Which distro do you recommend that doesn't use a lot of resources?

And I'm not talking about DSL, I want to install the distro on an old desktop computer.

I have a Pentium II with about 384MB of memory and about a 2 gig hard drive.

I installed SuSE 10.2 but it's painly slow!!!!

I plan on using the distro mainly for web browsing and light text editing, if any, and playing mp3z.

I do need the GUI interface, that's a must!

Which distro would you recommend?

I'll appreciate all your input!

Try changing the desktop to Fluxbox or similar lightweight desktop. KDE and Gnome are resource heavy and not suited to a slower, older PC. Alternatively, use Slackware or Debian or Puppy or.... - but don't use KDE/Gnome when you do decide.

Linux from Scratch with Icewm, Fluxbox, Blackbox, or twm window manager.

Why not DSL? It may be a bit slim for such a "powerfull" machine (I'm not joking) but it would be fast, and it can be made into a kind of Debian once installed on disk. I don't know how its X server would behave with video though...

You could try Debian itself.

Yves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by theYinYeti (Post 2884600)

I hear DSL is mainly for a USB stick or for the Live CD.

What I really want is a distro that is meant to be installed on a desktop environment but that is light weight.

I also don't know if it'll install on the old machine, it had 128MB of memory at first and SuSE 10.2 would complain there wasn't enough memory and ubuntu would stay hung. I had to partition the HD and created a swap partition before SuSE 10.2 would install although it was VERY slow. I now have 384MB of memory on that machine but it's still incredibly slow! When I'm viewing a web page there is a slight delay when you scroll down, it's very slow.

I'm going to go take a look at zenwalk and puppy linux.

If recommend for me to install DSL on the hard drive and if that's a possibility please let me know.

Meanwhile, I'm going to search other threads and find out how I can change from KDE to Flubox or another lightweight desktop on SuSE 10.2 as XavierP suggested.

Thank you everyone for your input, I'll let you know which option works out best!

For older hardware, if you are not afraid of using text-oriented installation and setup tools, both Slackware and Arch will allow the machine to run about as fast as it can. I currently run Arch on an older 550MHz laptop with 192MB of RAM. Although I am using KDE, it seems almost as fast as a "modern" desktop computer for non-demanding tasks like surfing the Internet, sending emails, and watching Flash videos. Let me add that although the setup is "text based," the final user environment can be fully graphical. I believe that any of the desktop environments or window managers is available for both. :twocents:

In case you're looking for an opinion, I have one for you. If you don't enjoy building or have the time to build your system with Gentoo or don't have the stomach for the arcane but brilliant Linux From Scratch (LFS), I'd have to say Slackware would give you a "modern" Linux very quickly and not usually take up a lot of resources. Why? In a standard install of Slackware very little is turned on unless you turn it on -- which I think for power users is the way it should be. Make sure (as the others on this board have pointed out) you don't use KDE or possibly even Gnome if you want it to run faster on the desktop. Instead, I'd suggest Blackbox or Fluxbox for a minimal desktop. However, the best combination of configurability and performance is handsdown Xfce. I have run this with a box similar to yours with very good results.

Suse is a fine distro (though strange if you work on Redhat/CentOS for a living) but I'd stay away (in the instance of the slower box) from it because it is really a commercial product and made for the masses. Yes even the Open Source version is a commercial product believe it or not -- free yes -- but their hope is to get as many people on the planet as possible using their product. More people are interested in the bells and whistles than those interested in pushing as much as they can out of old hardware. We are starting to become dinosaurs :-). Novell figures (and rightly so) that if you'll use their product then you probably are using a workstation that is either a year or two old at the most. Good luck.

Harlin

For your information, DSL can indeed be installed on hard drive, and is desktop-oriented. It can run as a LiveCD if you want to first get a look at it.
I found DSL to be very fast on my "nomade" laptop (see signature), to give you an idea. I even started, and switched between, 3 X servers at once (one of them a remote display via SSH) on this poor old laptop, using DSL!!

Now it is true that the choice of environment is very important. I've found (by tests) that IceWM is lighter than Fluxbox. And lately I've come to know JWM, which is lightning fast and lean. None are as configurable as Xfce, though.

Yves.