Linux version...
 

Hey, just wondering if anyone has any ideas on what versions of linux i could use for a celeron 400 with 96mb of pc133 ram??

whatever version you want! Just be aware that Xwindows may not want to run, since it requires 16mb of Video Memory (correct me if i am wrong please!) But i am sure you can get a GUI to run, it just won't be that pretty!

I currently run Suse 8.2 on an intel Celeron 500, with 512mb ram, it's going to be my RSYNC and DNS server - so there is no need for graphical. It will also run apache, ssh and eventually my internal mail server..... oooooh ahhhhh!

If you're not to fussed about graphics - any version will be fine, but if you do want graphics, you may want to look at getting a 32mb video card or higher - better safe than sorry!

You may want to try Knoppix. It is a good live CD distribution to detect hardware and if Linux will run.
You really need to bump up your memory. 96MB with a GUI desktop will be extremely slow. I have used Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Suse 9, 9.1, 9.2 as well as Fedora on a Pentium II 400MHZ but with 256MB of ram with no problems.
If you have not pick a distribution to use yet, check out www.distrowatch.com

thanks for the help
 

Hey thanks for the imput...i'm new to it...so any advice is appreciated, i have an AMD 2500+ running XP pro....boo i know...but i just want to play around for it and get a feel for it before i make the switch... thanks again.

Download one of the live CD versions. Just stick the CD in the drive and boot, it will run off of the CD ROM, you can then play with Linux with out wiping out XP.
Knoppix based on Debian
Berry based on Fedora
Freebsi based on FreeBSD.
Welcome to the wide Open world of Linux!

K, i have two comps though...i played around with beatrix running it directly from the disk...but it won't load on my old comp....so i'm trying an alternative...which is why i was asking for advice...
thanks though...i'm sure i'll be posting a lot more before i get it all loaded.

I got knoppix running on my Pentium 133 with 128MB RAM and a 4MB video card (it took FOREVER to load). It wasn't all that pretty - KDE was rather sluggish, but it ran. Of course, I was used to running Win98SE on a p2 233MHz, 128MB RAM, and a 16MB 3Dfx card a year ago (There was only about 20MB RAM free with no programs running in Win98SE, not sure how I ever survived with 64MB before). I sucessfully ran Debian with fluxbox on the p2 233 with dual monitors, which seemed fast enough at the time (don't try running The GIMP on a p2). Of course, I'd choose my p4 2.5GHz HT over either of these any day. My p2 233 now sits at church as a recording machine running Debian testing, fluxbox, and Audacity. It takes about 10 minutes to export a 50min .wav file and quite a while to encode it to FLAC (I haven't waited around to see how long, but it's more than an hour). I'm pretty sure both my p1 and p2 have PC100 RAM.

I've got slackware running on a machine that is 400 MHz with 128 ram and a 16 mb matrox dual head (and yes I am using the dual head feature :P) video card. Slackware including kde runs much faster than FC3 did, but still you are looking at about 1 second lag time in kde. Just configure it correctly, and expect x to take 20% of your processor at all times.

Alunduil

Everyone sing........
 

Sing to the Beetles " all you is love"
All you need is Ram brup brup brup
all you need is ram brup brup brup
Ok thats enough!

On older mahines there will be slowness,unless you fine tune the kernel. If you want to use the GUI, you have to get more memory!