I'm new to linux and have only really tinkered around with Suse & Mandriva live distributions. However, I've just been given a P1 75mhz with 64mb of Ram which I would like to put to use, if only as an opportunity to learn more about Linux. Any suggestions would be appreciated. For it's age, it's in surprisingly good condition & would be a shame to scrap it if I can learn from it.

Regards, Alan.

P.S. I have a Windows network, Blueyonder cable broadband & run a couple of small websites (hosted with 1&1) so if it could be used as a firewall as a personal web server for instance, that would be a useful project.

Depending on how many hits your websites might get, that should be able to handle being a firewall,web,ftp server for a home user. As for distros that would run good on that system, slackware or Damn Small linux would be my first choices.

Some kind of lightwieght linux with a gui like maybe xfce or other lightweight windowmanager other than gnome or kde. Make it a storage server or setup web, dns, mail or any other server on it. Turn it into a firewall/router and learn iptables. Setup ssh to get into and remove monitor and keyboard and stick it in a closet. You can do just about anything with it. Only thing that would be best is put as much ram into you can do.

Brian1

Most Linux distributions are for 80686 or i686 (Pentium Pro, Pentium MMX, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4, Athlon). I suggest either Slackware or Gentoo. I recommend do not use GUI or do not even think about it. To make GUI run well, you need at least 256 MB of RAM. Servers should never run GUI because it takes a lot of resources that are needed.