Looking for a distro for a friend

[questio verum]

I'm looking for a certain kind of distro for a friend. Something very different from what I personally would use. I hope someone here can help.

My friend has an older (P3) HP Pavilion. It came with Win98SE on a restore disc which has since been lost. He tells me this in the course of a phone call yesterday, and now I've got proselytization on my mind.

I'm thinking something like maybe DSL or Puppy, but he's technically-challenged, so I don't want to jar him too much. Also, he's battling cancer, so his energy level is not up enough for any marathon install & config sessions. I'd like to keep it as intuitive as possible for now. And if it's not too much, I'd like it to be a live-cd with firefox as the default web browser. Pre-packaged, or roll-your-own, it doesn't matter, as long as I end up with a live-cd.

Please put me up on anything you think might work here. I can burn multiple distro's and use the shotgun approach, if necessary. Since I'm in GA and he's in TX, driving over to his crib isn't an option, so I'd like to increase my chances of getting it right in one mailing.
Thanks.

qv

[elija]

Zenwalk?
XUbuntu?

[Freston]

Vector? They have a livecd version. And it runs well on older hardware. It's also pretty complete in terms of multi media and applications.

Downside is that the live version isn't installable, and the installable version isn't live.

[MikJP]

A lot depends on the RAM available in the computer. The computers with Win95 or 98 usually did not have a lot of RAM, so you should consider finding/donating him some more memory. At least 128 MB should be present for a comfortable and useful system. Even then, you might have to forget java and flash support.

In addition, forget distros using Live CD for installation. Old computers usually do not have enough RAM to be able to install the system using a live system. Most live CDs require nowadays 512 MB just to install.

Forget them.You need a distro that installs using a plain, text only installer.

You can read a short summary of distributions usable for a lightweight installation in my blog.

Antix? TinyME?

Greetings,

mikko

[bigvoo]

similar to my laptop story. I took a dell 8100 out of my sisters garage, that was headed to the recycler because her loacal computer store had given up on it...I installed xubuntu, and it runs great, will do anyting it did in xp. that coputer has 128 ram and its a pentium 3. t

[questio verum]

Thanks. I'm looking these distros over as time allows. I've installed xubuntu, and I think it would be a good choice, but for the load on the system. As I recall, my friends box had only 256mb or 512mb pc100. I need to call him about that, as it looks like it could make a big difference. He probably has a GeForce 2 or 3 level vidcard, or something equivalent. I'll probably review for another week or so, unless an obvious pick smacks me upside the head. TinyME looks promising, but I will need to download and play around with it. Looks like it doesn't come with Firefox installed by default. Package management will make a difference there. Anything added or reconfigured will be done with me hanging out on the phone, so I'd like to keep it as simple and intuitive as possible. A tall order, I know.

qv

[questio verum]

similar to my laptop story. I took a dell 8100 out of my sisters garage, that was headed to the recycler because her loacal computer store had given up on it...I installed xubuntu, and it runs great, will do anyting it did in xp. that coputer has 128 ram and its a pentium 3. t

That sounds encouraging. I wish I had some old hardware lying around to test this with. Wait a tick... I swear sometimes I'm braindead. I totally forgot about the lappy sitting in the closet! p3 with 128mb ram... perfect! Now maybe I can get a more accurate assessment.

[bigvoo]

oh, if your freind's comp has 256 megs of ram, you have my old laptop beat by a mile... I'm absolute beginner. I got my live cd out of a magazine at barns and noble, at that time the issue was : linux on older machines, what a stroke of luck...and it surprized me also, that i thought this box was only going to be a text-only web browser, but within 30 minutes I was watching youtube videos on it. good luck.

[bigvoo]

oh almost forgot, mik is right, my xbuntu was not able to install from the live cd. but on that cd was the alternate install version, which had it's own launcher. I had to make the install cd from a newer computer, BUT once I got it installed, it runs flash, I might post a video of it on youtube to show the world what an old broken dell laptop can do with linux

[Sporkman]

Xubuntu would run fine on a P3, as long as there's at least 256 megs ot RAM.

[edit: never mind, I had an unrefreshed version of this thread, without all the responses!]