Re: What Linux distro to use for old Intel machine, that fits on CDs?
- From: Douglas Mayne <doug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:40:24 -0600
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 02:25:02 -0700, raylopez99 wrote:
FINALLY! Somebody who sounds like they know what they're talkingAre you sure about that? A CPU of the Pentium Pro class, such as the
about! Thanks Douglas Mayne. My comments inline below.
On Jun 28, 9:29 am, Douglas Mayne <d...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 year of trying.
Maybe three's the charm?
Here goes again...
I have an old machine, not my main machine, nearly in mothballs that<snip>
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:
OK, I believe you.
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.
Got that. I did upgrade memory to at least 256 (I think in fact it's
512) and my CPU is faster than above.
Pentium 2 at 200MHz +/-, is not nearly as fast Pentium 3 class at 500 MHz.
<snip>
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.
YES! This is indeed the bottleneck. You are spot on.
Note: comment inline.
So, I ask again, which distro? Thanks in advance...
RL
Considering the uncertainty of what hardware you have, I think that it
would be easiest to download a live CD and simply test if you can get
online using that "junk" PC. If it takes half an hour to boot, then you'll
know it probably isn't practical to even think about running Open Office
using that hardware. If it boots right up, and you can start a firefox
session, then you will be on your way to satisfying the requirements of
the problem you describe.
As far as choosing which liveCD to use for the test, here's a short list,
in order of my preference:
1. Slax. http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php
2. gOS. http://www.thinkgos.com/downloads (probably, rocket with
enlightenment)
3. ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download
Slax has worked well for me as a simple system, and is a good choice
for testing because the download is small, less than 200M. BTW, on
old hardware you should elect to download iso's only; don't start down the
path of getting a USB flash based system to boot on ancient hardware. It
probably could be done, but my guess is that it isn't a n00b friendly
project. Read Slax's help and docs along the way, and you should be good
to go. Slax packs a lot into a small package.
See if you can get that far and report back, perhaps with the output from
this command:
# cat /proc/cpuinfo
The key values to check and report:
stepping : 6
CPU MHz : 500 MHz (or more)
If you are really sincere and want to try GNU/Linux, then nothing is
preventing you. Perhaps, you should test Slax on your primary system, too.
That way you'll know what to expect when attempting to boot it on the
more ancient system.
BTW, I read some of your responses to others on this thread. They make me
think that you are only "yanking the chain" here on comp.os.linux.misc;
testing whether the dog will bite back.
--
Douglas Mayne
.
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