I have an old Pentium 3 all in one computer. This computer will have one dedicated use, which is to watch video streamed over the network from a Slingbox type device. My only requirement is that I can run VLC to play the MPEG2-TS stream. I also want VLC to automatically paly and audio CD when it is placed in the CD drive. Therefore I really don’t require many codecs. My only other requirement is that I will need to load drivers for a wireless remote or something so that I can control VLC.
At the moment the PC does the above with windows XP, but it takes far too long to load. As I only want the computer to perform this one task, what Linux distro would people suggest for the quickest boot? I have so far tried puppy but it still takes a while to load. Does anyone have any suggestions where to go from here?
I am very new to Linux so will need something which is not too hard to setup.

Distros using systemd boot a lot faster. For the brave, initng is even faster again.

I'm not sure this is true -- my Debian system has GRUB entries to boot with either systemd or SysVinit and they seem to take roughly the same time.
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=120157

@OP: at the moment my Debian sid system boots ~0.1-0.3 seconds faster than my Arch system (circa 4 seconds for both) -- the current Arch kernel seems pretty bloaty compared to the Debian kernel and the kernel time accounts for the difference (userspace component is faster under Arch however).
OpenRC seems to take longer but I really don't know what I'm doing in Slackware/BSD so that could be why.

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This is old but kind of gives you some idea. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/fiv...distributions/

You will have to watch out since your cpu is so old with pae.


Some more ideas here. http://elinux.org/Boot_Time

Might be possible to run slitax or austrumi.

Might be possible to use gentoo and build a specific distro just tuned to your needs.

The fastest possible boot time would be if you suspend the system instead of shutdown. Glad to see that systemd doesn't even boot faster.

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I understand that suspend would be fastest, but I have not always found this reliable when resuming. Do I really need a full fledged OS just to run VLC. Can VLC not be started from a command shell?

You need the kernel and X. You do not need any of the usual daemons (cron, portmap, atd, xinted, httpd, mysqld, samba, sendmail/postfix, etc). But to get videos in, you need networking, I oresume.

So for simplicity would you suggest just remastering a stripped down version of puppy? Or are there any ready made bare bones iso from other distros which would be appropriate? Remember I only need this computer to perform one function, where the most important factor is speed in booting. In terms of this need, I want something which will be a definite improvement over XP or windows 2000. Plus I need something which will be relatively simple to setup, as my knowledge of linux is very limited. Or should I look to something like BSD?

Puppy takes a while to load because your computer is old and slow. Long boot times is one of the compromises when you choose not to upgrade your hardware.

It is a beginner misconception to say "if I remaster this distro with the things I don't need, it will be faster." No need to reinvent the wheel, just choose one of the excellent distros for older hardware, like: Puppy, SliTaz, AntiX.

Are you sure? If you remove other services that you don't need, there's fewer processes to use up resources, especially at boot when they're all trying to start up. It's not only eating CPU cycles, but while each service is loading it's also taking up disk I/O, which (in my experience) is one of the bootlenecks for booting.

Removing unused software, will speed things up, but I think hardware would speed things up more. In this case, an add on sata card, with an SSD, would give the fastest boot speed upgrade, IMHO.

to throw in my 2 cents worth here: Nobody has mentioned Damn Small Linux.

Crunchbang maybe too.

The deal with the specialty distro's are that some have been created to help run older stuff. Some may not even run vlc.
Yes, in any distro you get un-needed apps, drivers and what not. Kernel settings may be wrong, memory tuning out of whack. Just depends on how much you want to try.

I am not saying removing services and remastering the distro are useless enterprises, just that a beginner is unlikely to recover the time they sank into the project. Even taking the improved speed time into account, there will probably not be a net savings of the OP's time.

Damn Small Linux and CrunchBang are both dead and obsolete distros, that is why nobody recommended them so far.

how many MHZ or GHZ is in your pentium III also how much ram you have?