Hello everyone, I'm currently running Debian Sarge Stable on a PII 233mhz with 32RAM. The thing is its very slow to start with and I'm wondering what software would be ideal for a setup such as this. All I really need is Gaim and a web browser (this is for a kid). Firefox seems to take around a minute to start up and really lag the system down. Is there a lightweight GUI browser available for a setup like this? Is there a messaging client rather than GAIM for the same purpose? Keep in mind this is for a 13 year old kid so console stuff is pretty much out. Thanks a lot!

You might look into XFCE. Realistically though, the machine is underpowered compared to more modern PC's, and it would probably be overly optimistic to expect lightning fast responses.

You might also consider using Slackware, which (IMHO) offers you the greatest amount of control, plus it's got about half a dozen or so wimdow managers to choose from, and it's easy to switch between them. Good luck with it

Thanks for the reply, I understand that it would be crazy to expect instant results, however I understand that using Abiword as opposed to OpenOffice writer would be a much wiser choice. I was wondering if there was a web browser that could possibly perform better with slower machines.

The 233 MHz is not the problem, the 32 MB RAM is.

Try to upgrade the RAM to at least 256 MB, although it might be difficult to find the SDRAM type which it probably uses.

I have been running KDE comfortably on a 400 MHz machine.

jlinkels

Dillo is a fast little web browser. Sylpheed is a fast light e-mail client. Abiword, nedit, Xcalc, Xclipboard, Rox file manager, Xview, xnview viewers etc.

Fluxbox window mgr. XFCE is heavier.

Put some RAM into that box.

I've got a Celeron 400 with 128 MB RAM in it that runs FreeBSD ok. Now that's scraping the bottom with a Celeron.

Also a PII 350 192 MB RAM FreeBSD-Fluxbox and it'll run firefox and evolution. Not super fast but servicable.

They would do better with 256MB RAM. 32MB is not going cut it. You can run Fluxbox, Dillo,Sylpheed,Xcalc,Rox and apps like that.

Also look at DSL.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1

In the age of 2-3Ghz web users, I recommend not putting that kid on a 233Mhz computer at all.

The sad fact is that many of todays webdesigners(fool designers?), make their webpages highly processor intensive. By using a 233Mhz system, you simply cannot view many pages correctly. In the worst case senario, the system will completely stall out or even freeze. (I know, because I've had it happen to me before, and my desktop is 750Mhz.)

Sepero is right... we live in an insane world. And strongly pushed by Wintel.

I am collecting 1+ GHz computers that other people throw away. (You read that right) I am keeping them to put Linux on them if I need another computer.

I stopped collection machines < 1 GHz. I got too many of them.

You might find a 1+ GHz machine on the side walk on garbage collecting day. Well... maybe you can just salvage the SDRAM from one of those machines.

jlinkels