Re: old hardware

On Fri, 25 May 2007 19:39:21 -0400, PrDtR wrote:

thanks for the speedy response, recommend anything?

Sure, it might be a good idea to learn a different way of
posting. To aide in readability, don't top post, this helps later when
someone is searching the archives for something, trim your follow-ups to
the specific part of the post you're answering. But that is something you
will become accustomed to over time.

I agree with poster Michael Black about your hardware, should be fine for
normal computing. Obviously not a game machine.

Poster King Beowulf offers good advice about a light window manager
rather than one of the desktop environments. The distro mentioned,
Slackware, is noted for good descriptions in the configuration files.

A lot depends on your skill level and how much time and effort you are
willing to put into learning. Some of the more commercial (or trying to be
commercial) distros are very easy to install and configure. Some of the
better ones aren't as easy to install, especially on "bleeding edge"
hardware. So, a lot depends on your ability and your equipment. Things
like printers and wifi cards often give novices difficulty.

Posts like yours often turn into flame wars as people argue about *their*
favorite distro.

I run Debian 4.0 (Debian/GNU Linux); the *stable* version, "Etch" on a
system just such as you describe and I am very happy with it but I use a
light window manager, IceWM. I also have it on a 380MHz K6-2 and it is
slow but something like DSL (Damn Small Linux) runs very well on that
older system.

Your original question mentions "best". Naturally, personal preference and
experience influence this. Ultimately, you will have to decide what works
best for you. You might consider starting by trying some of the live
distros if you have a CDROM to boot from, to get the feel of things with
open source software before you install to your hard drive. "LFS, Linux
from scratch" using the easy to follow guide would end up with you knowing
a lot about how things work and how to configure and repair but it won't
give you a useful working system in one afternoon. The help forums
and newsgroups for the various distros also differ in how much they
welcome new users and how friendly the "community" is, and that will
matter to you when you need to ask for help, so lurk and listen to those
as you are testing a distro.

There are lots of terms in this reply that will give you things to google
for more information and searching is always the best way to start.

The Distro Watch site keeps track of popularity and new releases.
http://distrowatch.com/

Hope this helps.
Rodney


.

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