A friend of a friend was having trouble with their old computer, it won't boot Win98. So they got a new one but they would still like to use this one to get online, games(Of course nothing like Doom 3, lol,) And I am also guessing for her grandchild, who is two, to play around with. They have little computer knowledge and no Linux knowledge. So what I am going to do is get everything set up for the internet and as many games as I can on it, while leaving some room on the hard Drive.

Now here is the problem. It is an old Compaq DesktopPro 4000. It has 32 MB RAM, 2.5 MB Hard Drive, a 167 Mh Processor, an older cdrom drive(not sure of the speed yet but I am guessing around 16x,) and a LT Winmodem. Damn Small Linux won't even boot it But Feather Linux will, so there is hope, lol. There are three pictures I need to save and I think if I resize the hard drive, make a partition big enough for just the pictures(a few megs) and then Install linux.

Now since this is so old I am not sure what to install. I was going to install Mandrake 10.0 Official but it is for i586+. So I need a Linux distro that gives me the room to install games, picks up the LT Modem and doesn't use up all of the 2.5 GB(*Read Edit Below.) drive. Also doesn't run to slow. WIn98 was installed on it so I am guessing it went slow before anyways. I thought about maybe SuSE 9.1 even though I have had bad experiences with it, but it is a i386,(the free download.) Then I can throw my ethernet card on it temporarily and download the rest of what is needed from an ftp site. But again I am very limited on space and power, it is an old computer or did I say that already, lol. So I need to find a good distro for this computer. Anyone have suggestions or ideas(Besides junking it for a newer computer, lol.) Thanks.


--EDIT: Sorry, I originally put 2.5 MB hard drive, I should have put Gigabyte, not megaybyte, Its a 2.5 GB Hard Drive.--

Webwolf

Have you thought about Knoppix? You can boot that from CD and if you need to free up the CD drive you can load Knoppix into the ram. No hardrive space is needed at all, so that would help with that small HD of yours. Hope this helps.

I'm not sure that Knoppix will serve you well, with 32MB of RAM!

Most people recommend Vector Linux by default, but I don't know how large a typical installation would be.

HTH.

Thanks. I am looking at Vector. I might try a HD install of Feather Linux, Not sure yet, or if I can. Also I made a mistake. I meant to put 2.5 GB, not MB, hard drive.



Webwolf

I have about the same kind of PC: 200MHz, 32 Mb, My fist Linux install (slackware 9.1) was on a 450Mb HD, which worked. In order top do that, I had to follow some advice about which packages I needed and which I didn't.

The result was pretty bare-bones however, and trying to install addidional software (e.g. abiword) turned into a lot of hunting for dependencies.
I added another harddisk and installed the whole she-bang of Slack 9.1 on about 3 Gb partition to make sure I had all packages I wanted. I am sure you can fairly easy find a middle ground with say 1.5 Gb or less.

With this configuration, my biggest problem now is memory. Even running fluxbox, the system doesn't feel snappy (but is workable), because it starts swapping as soon as i startx. This is really a pitty, as I can run Win98 quite easily on such a PC, and I started out with the goal to be able to run something equivalent to Win98 plus a bit more. <rant>Remember how everybody on the board claims how linux will run on old obsolete hardware ? Most of them don't realize that old obsolete hardware doesn't come with 128 Mb in RAM, or have another idea of obsolete as I do.</rant>

Anyway, it seems to me now that I have to find a way to ditch XFree86 for a more lightweight variant. I know about the existence of Xvesa and Xfbdev, but was unable yet to get these working. There just doesn't seem to be much info about them around, even though I think that a memory-lightweight X is what really is needed to bring new life to old PC's as desktop PC's.

If you search my posts about Linux + Laptop, you'll see that I know what obsolete hardware is. Many others do, too. But you're right, some simply don't realize what it is to have 32MB RAM.

Yves.

Vector seems to be good, but I was hoping for Mandrake. I can only find i586's for that. I think the oldest version I can find is 7.2. I have no idea how that one is. Slackware sounds good, I have tried that before and have liked it but like you mentioned I would have to stop at 1.5 MBs. I have Slackware 9.1 already burnt onto disk. Also have 10.0. My biggest concern would be if this Ltmodem will work with it. I will have to do my research. What I might do is see if I can find another hard drive, maybe a cheap 5 or ten GB and add that. Then the only draw backs would be the RAM and Processor. But I will make it work. What about Red Hat 9? Any one have any thoughts on that. I believe it is an i386 iso. But I am unsure how much it would take to run well. I have used it on a PII(350MHz) computer with, originally, 128MBs(Aprox.) of RAM. It worked well but there is a difference in 32/128 and 167/350, lol. Thanks for the replies.


Webwolf

I use Mandrake 9.1 on a P.150MMX with 32MB RAM laptop.

An i586 covers Pentium and up, doesn't it? I keep getting that mixed up, lol. Mine is an i686, I believe, AMD Athalon XP 2800+. Can someone refresh my memory of the i386, i486, i586, i686, etc.

Also YinYeti, does Mandrake 9.1 run painfully slow at all? Or does it handle it fairly well, I hope the latter

Thanks.


Webwolf

i386=80386
i486=80486
i586=Pentium, Pentium MMX, K6, C3(Ezra)
i686=Pentium II, Pentium III, K6-II, C3(Nehemiah)

My laptop's main use used to be as a thin X client. But I've found it to be actually usable by itself.

It is not painfully slow, neither is it very fast.
I use it quite comfortably with:
- Desktop environment: none.
- Window manager : Matchbox.
- File manager: Rox.
- Mail & news: Netscape 4 Messenger.
- Web & ftp: Netscape 4 Navigator + Links (graphic version)
- other net tools: wget, ssh, sftp
- Internet access: wvdial or plain pppd
- Servers: sshd
- Office: I did not decide, yet, but it seems I'll go with Gnome tools (abiword and... oocalc's equivalent (don't remember the name))

Mozilla and OpenOffice are installed in case of real need. But they're not the same:
- Mozilla takes a long time to load, and is slow on usage.
- OpenOffice takes even longer to load, but is very usable once loaded.

Yves.

I recently gave my 11 yr old son my old
Pentium 200 64Mb Ram 4g HDD
its running Mandrake 7.2 no problems
he even installed it himself

you have a Ram issue though with only 32 meg
so dont expect graphics to be that great

floppy

Thanks. Now that I cleared up the ix86 issue I kept getting mixed up on, lol. I have a few ideas. I have the computer here and I am going to try Mandrake first. I also have an older 500MB hard drive I may throw on for the swap, that way I can save the 2.5GB for Linux. If it runs too slow I am going to try Ubuntu Linux. It is made for i386 and up. I am using it now on my computer and it seems to work fine. It is a Debian based African(I believe) distro. As long as I can get a distro that is fairly easy to set up with an ltmodem then I can do the rest from the ground up if needed. I also have an extra 16MB of memory that may or may not work with this computer. It will bring it up a little more. When Linux can't find sufficient RAM doesn't it use the swap more? And if it does is it slower using swap then RAM?


Webwolf

You mentioned something above that I never thought about. You can have a window manager without a desktop enviroment? Where can I get more info on that.



Webwolf

Very simple in fact.

A desktop environment (DE) is a collection of protocols and tools, that work together to unify the look and feel of all applications. There's a protocol for drag'n'drop, one for setting the look of windows and widgets, one for cutting and pasting non-text data, and so one. Basic tools include file manager, desktop icons, menu and toolbars...

Commonly-used DEs are Gnome and KDE. But a DE does not manage windows, so you have to use a window manager also. KDE comes with its own KWM, which you can change for Enlightenment for example, which is both Gnome- and KDE-compliant (for example a maximized Enlightenment window won't overlap KDE's or Gnome's toolbars). Gnome comes by default with Metacity. It used to come with Sawfish. But you can change that.

Nowadays, you can achieve an almost-DE-like environment without the overhead of a DE, because freedesktop.org defines a lot of important protocols (that are now shared by both Gnome and KDE), that are followed by lots of applications by themselves: Matchbox follows closely freedesktop.org standards; Rox follows freedesktop.org recommandations for drag'n'drop; and so on...

So how do you have a GUI without a DE? Simple: just use your prefered window manager, and your prefered tools, making sure they fit well together.

Yves.

I remember the oocalc's equivalent name!!! Gnumeric!