Re: What Linux distro to use for old Intel machine, that fits on CDs?
- From: General Schvantzkopf <schvantzkopf@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:55:37 -0500
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:29:37 -0600, Douglas Mayne wrote:
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:24:31 -0700, raylopez99 wrote:
I have not been able to get a straight answer to this, despite almost a<snip>
year of trying.
Maybe three's the charm?
Here goes again...
I have an old machine, not my main machine, nearly in mothballs that
somebody uses on occasion to surf the net and print a letter on a
recent model HP inkjet using OpenOffice as the word processor program.
The machine is running on Windows 2000. The machine is an Intel Pentium
II, about 200 MHz clock, with about 500 MB RAM (or maybe it's 225, I
upgraded it but forgot what it was, but I'm pretty sure it's 512 MB).
The C: hard drive is only 2 GB large--the only one for the OS. This
was a popular configuration in the mid to late 90s so I'm sure a lot of
these machines exist in the world, so somebody must have loaded Linux
on one of them.
I recently bought a Dell Dimension 4100, built circa 2001. I got it from
the local university surplus property for $20. It came outfitted as
follows:
CPU: Pentium 3, 933 MHz
Memory: 512MB
Network: 3Com 10/100
Sound: Ensoniq
Optical: CD-RW (12x)
HD: none
I added a 500G SATA drive and controller, and now it has new life. It
can do all of the jobs you outlined without a hitch. I use it as
secondary workstation all of the time. Here are some screenshots running
Dropline Gnome on Slackware 12.0:
http://www.xmission.com/~ddmayne2/images/ss.2008-06-20.01.png
http://www.xmission.com/~ddmayne2/images/ss.2008-06-20.01.png
My advice is to get a computer with similar specs if you intend to run
Open Office, Mozilla, etc. without running into a lot of frustration. As
an academic exercise, the absolute minimum that I would consider using
as desktop (in 2008) is
CPU: Pentium 3, 500MHz
Memory: 256M
Memory is critical. The more the better.
BTW, I needed to add a disk to the system above because the university
removes all disks before reselling their systems. In your case, you
probably will need to add a disk, also. That is because of the fact that
2G is tight for installing any major GNU/Linux distribution. Maybe, you
should consider throwing a few bucks at a SATA PCI disk controller ($25)
and 500G SATA HD ($100). That could be a good investment because if you
decide to upgrade to a totally new system later on you already have the
disk. On the other hand, a lot of vendors have prebuilt complete systems
for about $300- and they will definitely run circles around these "junk"
systems. You'll have to decide if it is worth it because at some point,
it becomes a case of throwing good money after bad.
I disagree about throwing any money at an antique machine. A new VIA based
machine is $189 so you should always keep that in mind when considering
putting any money into a machine that is less than 1GHz.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883118005
As for the original question, I wouldn't bother doing anything with a
200MHz box except to use it as a backup server or a firewall. A 500MHz
processor is the lowest spec processor that I would consider for desktop
use.
.
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