Which distro is appropriate for this desktop?
 

Well, I'm finally getting back into the linux world, and I decided to break the bottle of champagne by buying a good 'ol used desktop.

The basic specs are:

- Pentium III 500 MHz
- 128 MB memory
- CD ROM & floppy drives

I was just wondering what distros I should consider for this laptop. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[You may want to take the fact that I'm somewhat of a linux :newbie: into consideration. :D ]

Well, I always recommend Arch. Its a bit difficult to learn, but once you do - you actually know something. It's quick and lightweight as well. Paired with XFCE or fluxbox - That old desktop could just prove useful.

For testing all features in current distributions, your RAM is low.

Arch Linux looks pretty appealing. I've always been a fan of the simple.

Oh, and I'm working on adding 256 MB of memory to it. Hopefully that will be enough.

I'm running suse 10.0 OSS on a similar machine. Celeron 633, 128MB RAM, and it is so slow it's painful. Luckilly I'm only playing about for now, but I'm hoping to dump in some more RAM some time soon.

i ran debian on a similar spec machine, ran ok (bit sluggish) used fluxbox, no chance with the heavier ones like KDE

Gentoo might be a good idea... I've had success running it on older machines. If not, Debian Stable might be good.

Thanks for all the replies...

The extra 256 MB of memory is confirmed, making the total around 384 MB.

Also, I'm willing to learn; this PC will not (intially, at least) be connected to the internet, or be used for much in the way of multimedia. I plan to use it strictly to become comfortable with the command line and get started with a few fundamental languages like Python, Perl, etc.

Oh yeah, the hard drive is only 10 GB, though I've got an 80 gig backup, so no worries.

if the PC will not be connected to the internet, Arch isn't a very good idea. Arch almost requires a broadband connection to get up to speed after an install.

those specs should be enough to run any distro i would think. so you can try them out and see what you like. However if it is sluggish you can always go to dsl which can run on about anything.
distrowatch

xpromisex - I could probably hook it up to broadband for the initial installation, but I'd like to keep the computer offline most of the time. Is internet access needed only for the installation of Arch Linux, or should I search for another distro if I won't have constant internet access?

Thanks again!

Gentoo can run on any system as old as an 80386. It is easy to install, but tedious. Straight out of the box, Perl, Python, C, C++ is already installed and ready to interpret or compile your code. I suggest doing a stage 3 installation of Gentoo.

Arch doesn't require a constant connection but it's nice. Eg all the packages are hosted online (as is with most distros) and if you find something you want, it won't be on a CD around somewhere unless you download the repos on to DVD or something yourself.

Thanks for the info. I'm leaning toward Gentoo now. I can deal with tedious installations :) Thanks again for the info.