Hi all. I have a Dell Inspiron 600M with the following specs:
1.5GHz Intel Proc
512MB RAM (can't get more for it, long story)
74GB HDD

I've tried installing Fedora 12, but it froze during the install. The distro doesn't have to have a full-blown Gnome or KDE, but it does need to have the same service <service name> start|stop|restart model as Fedora/RedHat.

Any/all help would be greatly appreciated.

Try using the text mode installer; that said: 512 MB is a bit meager; I've seen
yum in action, gobbling up > 700MB in a patch run.



Cheers,
Tink

with 512 ram any distro will be slow

though i do have ScientificLinux 6.1 running on a DELL from 2000/2001
an old p4 1.9 ghz , 1 gig ram and a Gforce2 mx400 nvidia card ( no longer supported - NO driver from nvidia ) using nouveau


SL and CentOS are the free rebuilds of RHEL 5 and 6

At this time i would use ScientificLinux 6.1 over CentOS 6.0

I'd go for something that's designed for minimal resources. xubuntu, puppy linux, vector linux etc. It's still not going to be fast, but if you can keep your memory use under 512MB it wont be painfully slow. So avoid piggy interfaces, use Opera instead of Firefox, etc. After you hit 512MB, you'll be paging due to lack of memory. Avoid paging.

Just fired up my old Dell Latitude CPi. It's a couple years older than yours, I think. It's only got 256MB. When I run Puppy Linux and fire up a Chrome web browser about half the memory is still free. It's not great, but it's usable.

What distro is Puppy based off of? Need to have the service <package name> start|stop model.

What distro is Puppy based off of? Need to have the service <package name> start|stop model.

Is this for server or desktop use?

CentOS with no GUI should run OK on those specs.

Little from the Red Hat tradition will work properly in 512MB any more. The latest Fedora recommends over 1GB! It's partly the amount used by Anaconda (which would explain why you couldn't install), but, even if you use a text-based install and add X later, there's still the problem of the amount of memory needed by KDE or Gnome. None of these distro's are reliable with other GUIs: CentOS doesn't even have a working Xfce.

The one exception is Fuduntu, which was a Fedora derivative but has just forked. It will run in under 400MB, but the current drawback is the very small repository (see my review on this site).

If you are just needing something that will run well in 512MB, I'd forget non-standard things like Puppy. For high stability, Salix or Vector Standard (Slackware derivatives); for cutting-edge, Lubuntu or the LXDE version of Mint.

I appreciate the feedback, but it's absolutely crucial that I have the same service scripts as it will be used to test certain scripts that will eventually be rolled out into production. I looked at the Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu and Mint, but their hardware requirements far exceed what the ole laptop can do and, more importantly, they lack the service scripts found on RedHat/Fedora distributions. I think it's time to give up on this project and realize that I just need to get a newer laptop and stop being such a cheap-ass. 8^) Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.

You might get away with RHEL/Fedora if you went with a text install and no GUI i.e. a server-like env. That would be sufficient to test service scripts.
I wouldn't know about the actual installation Mem reqd though...

Or get an older version of RH. Many mirrors out there.

There a number of other clones too. Scientific and odd names like pink tie and white glove type clones.

I think you would be fine with x windows or some other window manager on any red hat clone or red hat.

I am running Fedora 16 with 768MB, and it's slow. I assume that if I add memory it will work noticeably better. I do use graphical mode.

Try using Debian with a XFCE GUI if needed.

as far as the "service" take a look at chkconfig.

Description: system tool to enable or disable system services
Chkconfig is a utility to update and query runlevel information for system
services. Chkconfig manipulates the numerous symbolic links in /etc/init.d/,