Opinions on lightweight UNIX/Linux for archaic/antiquated hardware

kayasaman · 01-14-2012, 07:43 AM

Hi guys and gals,

I need everyone's help!

My notebook broke

<sniffle sniffle>

....actually it turned itself into Kentuky Fried Laptop as there was a really bad burning smell coming from the system on powerup.

Anyway to cut a long story short I've now gone from a Core2Duo with 6GB RAM and 64bit OS down to my ancient Centrino with 494MB RAM.

So far am using DSL (Damn Small Linux) on it and the system is performing quite well minus the overheating of the CPU (probably as is running 2.4 kernel and no powerd).

I would like to get opinions on a good lightweight Linux or UNIX distro similar to DSL.

To be honest my preference was to install FreeBSD 8.2 on the machine which worked but then while building the GUI from ports or adding as package using pkg_add -r the machine overheated.

Currently I know of Milax (Alexander Eremin's OpenSolaris spin-off), FreeSBIE (FreeBSD 7.x based live CD), and DSL.

I think the DSL project has gone offline as the forums don't seem to be active anymore or further work going on with the distro hence the primary repos seem to redirect to nowhere and the thing still uses the 2.4 kernel and is based on Debian Woody - long before I started using Linux.

A quick Google showed me that these are current available projects:

Puppy Linux
Slax
Illumos
WattOS
Macup
Lubuntu
Xubuntu

I have no idea which of these is best or is going to be able to get the maximum out of my hardware?

My backend server runs NFSv4 and is locked out of using prior versions so in order to be able to access my files I need to be able to run the latest kernel/system.

I guess the Ubuntu method may work as I know and like Ubuntu and have run Kubuntu 9.04 on this machine before (with difficulty).

Desktop environments I would want to run are either Fluxbox, Blackbox, or JWM. Although this is the easy part as can get from the repos no probs

Anything based on Fedora or Ubuntu would be fine but am willing to try something new if it actually uses less system resources - FreeBSD I really like but overheats - I don't think Milax is viable as Solaris/OpenSolaris has always had limited hardware support and apps; plus needs about 1GB RAM to work with the ZFS file system as the default ZFS pool mounts / root.

Urrrrggghhh lol. HELP!

Thanks

onebuck · 01-14-2012, 10:29 AM

Hi,

I would add Salix OS to your list;

Quote:

DistroWatch.com: Salix OS
Salix OS is a Slackware-based Linux distribution that is simple, fast, easy to use and compatible with Slackware Linux. Optimised for desktop use, Salix OS features one application per task, custom package repositories, advanced package management with dependency support, localised system administration tools and innovative artwork.

Quote:

excerpt from Salix OS
There are five editions of Salix; the Xfce, LXDE, Fluxbox, KDE and Ratpoison editions, each edition featuring the respective desktop environment.

Try the liveCD;

Quote:

Live disc image: Allows you to boot and use Salix directly from a CD or USB drive without needing to install Salix to your hard drive. The live disc image also includes the Salix Live installer, a graphical installer which allows you to install Salix to your hard drive from the live session. Live disc images are available in 32bit architecture only.

kayasaman · 01-14-2012, 10:45 AM

Thanks onebuck for that choice

It looks good:

kernel 2.6+
Package manager for extra software
Don't need to compile kernel like on Gentoo which would kill my system
Runs Flux but I guess JWM can be easily installed too

Hmm... looks like I may go for this one!

onebuck · 01-14-2012, 11:13 AM

Hi,

Glad it helps. I would suggest that you use the desktop image of choice instead of using the LiveCD install method. That way you can monitor the install methods and results for the selected image.

LiveCD can be helpful while troubleshooting and initial setups for your hardware.

DavidMcCann · 01-14-2012, 11:28 AM

If you choose Salix, you don't have to get the Fluxbox version. The LXDE one will certainly work in 494MB and the Xfce probably will. If you like Icewm, you could try Vector Light.

snowday · 01-14-2012, 11:53 AM

My personal favorites for older hardware include: AntiX, CrunchBang, SliTaz. Any of these can be upgraded to Testing/Unstable/Cooking if you need bleeding-edge software. I also hear good things about Tiny Core Linux as the successor to DSL, might want to try that one too.

jefro · 01-14-2012, 01:16 PM

Along with the above, fuduntu looks promising. Vector ought to work. Many have good comments about peppermint. I used to use austrumi a lot.

kayasaman · 01-14-2012, 05:24 PM

Thanks for all the suggestions guys

They were really helpful!!!

I have actually managed to install Salix and got the Flux desktop working......

There's still lot's of software which I am looking for in order to get what I need out of this system temporarily until my new notebook comes in 3 weeks.

So far am just trying to learn the 'Slackware' way of doing things as am so used to starting programs using /etc/init.d/service start/stop/restart that now using

/etc/rc.d/rpc.service start/restart/stop is confusing but manageable!

Currently I have been able to setup my wireless IPW2200:

Code:

slapt-get -i ipw2200-fw wicd

Yep that easy... DSL was a nightmare of first using wpa_configure (was it....??)

then:

Code:

wpa_supplicant -i eth0 -Dipw
ifconfig eth0 <ip_address>
route add default gw <gw_address>

I have already compiled JWM

Just need to figure out how to tie it into the Login Manager now.

Also I need to find a decent terminal emulator as am used to GTerm or XFCE4's Terminal but can't find them in the repo's. I like the way I can cut/copy/paste in them....

I have already managed to mount my NFSv4 partition as rpc.statd gets started by:

#sh /etc/rc.d/rc.rpc start

All in all though I like Salix alot

Though the name does remind me of Scalix which I used to use for my mail server but have now swapped over to Zimbra.

Oh yeah and I managed to create 25GB of / root and the rest of the 80GB HD for SWAP space???? need to fix that lol. Will use the install cd for recovery.

Not that hard - just boot to shell then fdisk to create the new partitions, create the file system of desire - am using JFS (just to be different other then that no reason) and mount the / root partition then edit fstab and it should be ready to rock-n-roll.

kayasaman · 01-14-2012, 05:26 PM

Oh did I mention that my machine is now running much cooler....

Either ACPI is working properly or there is built-in CPU frequency scaling using POWERD or other.

.....and 2.6.37 kernel (that's later then my Fedora 15??)

This is waaaay cool

kayasaman · 01-14-2012, 06:04 PM

Ok got round the Terminal issue by installing XFCE.... not that I'd ever use it but it is a dependency.

JWM was easy too:

Code:

[xsessions]$ pwd
/usr/share/xsessions

[xsessions]$ ls
fluxbox.desktop  jwm.desktop  xfce.desktop

[xsessions]$ cat jwm.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Jwm
Comment=Log in using Jwm
Exec=/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.jwm
Icon=
Type=XSession

Then:

Code:

[xsessions]$ cat /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.jwm
#!/bin/sh
# $XConsortium: xinitrc.cpp,v 1.4 91/08/22 11:41:34 rws Exp $

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
    xrdb -merge $sysresources
fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f $userresources ]; then
    xrdb -merge $userresources
fi

if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $usermodmap
fi

# Start the window manager:
exec /usr/local/bin/jwm

Now all is well, just got to start customizing JWM to get it to look like the DSL version which is probably 1.x

kayasaman · 01-14-2012, 06:53 PM

Some links that people reading this might find useful:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...e-13-a-809441/

http://forum.vectorlinux.com/index.php?topic=11.0

http://joewing.net/programs/jwm/config.shtml

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-space-190224/

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/fdisk_partitioning.html

Plus a screenshot of my now 'hacked..ish' Salix desktop.