Re: Best Linux version for throw away computers?

In article news:<TwR8i.13169$RX.2657@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, *****
charles wrote:
I come across tons of computers that are the older kind.
They generally are P2-233 with 64M of ram and 2G hds.
Windows 95 runs fine on this type of machine but it seems
that Linux as it moves forward is slowly abandoning this
level of hardware.

I managed to install Debian ("Sarge", I think it was) on a machine with
exactly that spec (IIRC I had to boot DSL from a liveCD first to create a
swap partition). It runs OpenOffice under KDE -- just -- but has only about
100MB for user data.

This was an experiment, though, and if I were intending to use linux (or
anything, nowadays) on that machine I'd upgrade the hard drive and RAM.

I think it would be usable as it is with DSL, though, if that's not too
limiting for you; as it probably would with "puppy linux" which is also
well thought of despite the stupid cutesy name.

Another possibility would be to use Gentoo ... but you'd have to build the
system on a more powerful PC and install from packages on the P2. Gentoo
needs something like 10GB of disk space to build, and building on a P2/233
would take about a fortnight (depending on the packages you wanted).

Cheers,
Daniel.


.

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