Quandry Which Older 32-bit Computer to Put Linux Distro
 

1st post
Hi, I sure could use your help!
Phew, I knew it would be some work, but it seems a little harder than I thought it would be. I don't want to go further on my own if I am headed down to a dead end.
WHAT I HAVE
Have Dell Dimension 2400 on Win XP, cannot upgrade it to Windows 7, so want to download & install a Linux distro (live, w/ option to later install) to the Dimension 2400. This machine is a 32-bit, has a 40 GB hard drive (w/ 15 GB free), 1 Gb RAM, Intel 4 CPU (2.20 GHz), w/ a CD drive and old floppy drive. It is bootable from a USB stick.
WHAT I WANT TO KNOW/DO (PART ONE)
1. I want to find a distro to run on a 32-bit machine, no DVD drive, 40 GB hard drive w/ limited capacities.
2.I want to find a download link that I can download a distro to the machine (considering it does NOT have a DVD drive)so that I can run the distro live to check it out before installing it on the 2400.
3.Am I being too ambitious, considering the 2400 is older, w/ limited physical resources? Should I just forget about putting Linux on it & just use it as a CD player and CD burner?

You see, the 2400 has much better audio inputs than the E510 (see below)& I'd like to continue keeping our sound system connected to the 2400 so I can create CDs from our cassette tapes.

WHAT I HAVE DONE
1. Have done a lot of reading online and also from Linux for Dummies
2. I found a "Fedora 32-bit download" on a freeware site & ended up w/ malware & had a bit of a cleanup. :-(
3. From cyberciti dot biz I downloaded "Fedora 20 ISO CD download" for 32- bit to the 2400, but ended up w/ broken file icons.
4. Learned about WinMD5, Torrent (as in uTorrent) and about FreeDownloadManager (all which I installed on the 2400).
I STILL WANT TO LEARN so here's INFO ABOUT E510:
If I can't put a Linux distro on the 2400, I still want to learn Linux. Have 2 computers. I have a "newer" Dell E510, which I upgraded to Windows 7 Home Professional. The E510 (also 32-bit), has a DVD drive, 144 GB hard drive (currently 90 GB free) & 2.5 GB RAM. I could eventually partition the E510 hard drive & add a Linux distro.

Sorry if this is TOO much info, but I'd rather give too much than not enough.
For my sanity as a newbie, which route would you suggest? Thanks in advance.

What you want is a LIVE CD. There are numerous; however I like Debian, Ubuntu, and Knoppix. Note that for Ubuntu, it's larger than a CD so you'd use a thumbstick; providing that laptop can boot off of one.

What you do is burn the ISO image to your CD, you boot off of that CD and can use Linux to try it out. You can then also install it permanently on your machine. Some things you can't do are to save data, because it's a CD; however you can access your existing hard drive and see and save data there. Ultimately it sounds as if you'll be installing Linux on that system. I do recommend you just re-image it entirely when you do install Linux. Just say that you want to reinitialize the whole drive and use it for Linux.

Besides data files, like documents, pictures, music, or movies; Linux will not take up much. I usually install Linux on 8 GB drives either thumbsticks, usually SD cards and Linux itself takes up less than 20% of the space. It can be way smaller if you wish to do that. My level is that I'm fine if it takes one to two Gig of space, leaving 6G or more free for data on that system. Expect to have more than 35 Gig free on that system after install. For extra space you can always use external USB flash drives; that's what I do. Operating system is on the Laptop and data is on an external drive.

To add these thoughts. My opinion is that over time with Windows growing and needing more space, etc, etc. If you have a Windows requirement; use that on the newest machine and use your older machines for Linux. There's little point these days in keeping an old system running where Windows keeps changing and growing in size, there end up being compatibility problems and then problems obtaining a recovery CD or other stuff like that.

I must point out too that you dont go to random websites to download linux distros you go to the distro website to download the iso image.

If you want Fedora then go to the Fedora website (Link below)

https://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora#desktops

look at the screen shot and download the fedora flavor that you like the most, keep in mind Xfce, LXDE, Mate version are going to be lighter than Gnome and KDE. So if you are using it in a resources limited computer then Xfce, LXDE, Mate, are the best options for you.

Another Linux Distribution to keep in mind are:

http://xubuntu.org/

http://lubuntu.net/

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

http://software.opensuse.org/131/en

Once you decided which one you want to try, download the ISO file and burn it to a CD, then boot your computer from that CD.
You can also make bootable flash drives using unetbootin http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Stop downloading stuff from ramdon websites now!

Wow! Snap! I missed that one.

TroN is absolutely correct. Linux is freely available, with the exception of certain commercial distributions. There should never be any need to go to freeware sites to obtain Linux.

Further, many ISO downloads (the entire CD image) will absolutely show the MD5 checksum on their site, so you can get a version of md5sum either for Linux (typically included) or Windows to verify that the image you have is correct and not corrupt.

Cd sized download based on Debian that can be ran live from CD

http://sourceforge.net/projects/anti...al/antiX-13.2/

Go for the full 32 bit iso. Md5sum check downloaded iso before burning cd in Windows. YouTube can show you how to md5sum in Windows XP.

Instructions for most anything using AntiX is covered by

https://www.youtube.com/user/runwiththedolphin

Booting 1st timers instructional video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kCotJWcoiE

Good luck and Happy Trails, Rok

it depends on YOUR 3d card

i have Scientificlinux 6.4 installed on a 13 year old DELL 8200
Pentium 4 - 1.9 Ghz , 1 gig ram and a 500 gig drive

the only BIG issue is the Nvidia Gforce2 card

I had to downgrade Xorg to use the "96" nvidia driver

you WILL NOT !!!!!! be able to install fedora 20 on your machine
( well maybe in TEXT ONLY mode )

debian , you might be able to do a custom install

Ubuntu 13 -- NO
Fedora20 -- NO
CentOS 5.10 -- yes , but it is a clone of RHEL 5.10 so .....
Centos 6.5 ? maybe ?

I have Slackware Current running on a laptop with similar specs. I am not using KDE, though, but, rather, E17 and Fluxbox. I have also run Fedora on it, but that was several Fedora's ago.

I too, have Slackware running on several machines (laptop and desktop) with lower specs than that, so the hardware whould not really be an issue. I run Fluxbox on all of mine, but Xfce and any of the lower resource desktops should be OK.

Thanks to all of you folks. You've given me an education. I'm a believer in lifelong learning & you've given me fodder for several months' worth of learning and doing. Some of the links led to old tyme websites, which is also cool, as I enjoy the old Internet. Won't respond to rtmistler, TroN-7004, rokytnji, John VV, frankbell, and astrogeek individually right now because we are doing a remodel of my computer room/ office. I do clean up & it's time for me to get busy in the next room.
Will let you know how the Linux project fares. I see that each of you have your favorite distro(s). It will take me a little while to come up with my fave(s). I want to be involved w/ Linux, coding and also open source, so this is going to be fun. Again, thanks!