Which distro is best for old hardware
 

hi all!!

i need help choosing a distribution for a certain configuration of hardware... its a pentium 1 166mhz with 16 mbram and if i am right it has an 8mb onboard graphics unit... the machine is an ancient ACER Aspire bought in 1997...

i'll be leaving my precioussss (Athlon XP) and be going to my parents for a few months and this is the PC they are using at the moment.... all they do is check email anyway... it came preinstalled with Windows 95.... and then somebody 'upgraded' to Windows 98 but it runs at a snails pace.... so basically i am trying to force convert them to linux.... since this will be meant for them, use of KDE or Gnome is essential... ability to run an office suite / program, kopete or gaim instant messaging, web browser and email client all with GUI...

my reading up led me to slackware but i am not sure if i can handle the installation single handedly and if it would work at all on the said hardware (would it???) i have about 3 months experience with Mandrake 10... would this work on the antique PC?? any other distros that would work on this hardware and still have descent GUI tools... ??? any suggestions are welcome

i might use this box as an X Terminal... can somebody please direct me some good sites covering most aspects on how to go about doing this ...and also for clustering... (can u use clustering and X Terminals at the same time??? i wonder...)

thanks for your replies in advance...

U can try slackware or vector linux (its based on slack). Also, dont expect much from this machine - its too old for X - u can try some old distributions if u want X to run - also, try some lightweight window managers like openbox or fluxbox or blackbox.

I suggest u leave the old machine with win95 as it is.

Perhaps Damn Small Linux?


Well I'll be a monkey's uncle... :)

Damn Small looks great. You can run it from a live CD before you decide to install. There is a report of it running on a 33MHz 486SX with 16Mb.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/486.html

The screenshots show X and a web browser(!). The 486SX has no floating point unit. Apparently it takes 3min to decode 0.5sec of MP3 sound :eek:

Sure, a small distro may help, but using Gnome will be difficult with 16MB RAM, and using KDE will be even more.