Howdy.

[Mol_Bolom]

Hello, Osiyo, K'u xi, Yaw, Bonjour, Bozho, and all the other languages of the world...

I really don't have Linux yet...But I am looking into it.
Many years ago, which I had believed was at least 10 to 15 years ago but was extremely wrong, my disc is copyrighted in 1999...Could have swore it was longer ago than that...Old age is getting to me, I guess, Ha ha...But I forgot what I was talking about there...

Anyway, I had Red Hat Linux with Mandrake 6.0, and well, I've gotten really tired of Windows XP.
I've been looking for a LiveCD to test and see if my system would be able to run any of the Linux OS's, but it looks like that may be just a pipe dream. I've only got 256mb of memory, and Ubuntu say's I need 384 or something like that. I've been looking into Fedora, but I haven't seen any information on the system requirements for memory.


Well, anyhoo...HI...

[jayd512]

Hello, and Welcome to LinuxForums!

On a machine with 256 RAM, you may want to look into some less-heavy distros. I think Xubuntu would run on it, but I can't guarantee it. Xubuntu is just Ubuntu, but with a lighter Window Manager (XFCE). You can also check this poll for opinions of what we think could work well on older hardware. And if you want to look into LiveCD's, here ya go: Live CD list. Let us know what you decide on!

Again, Welcome to the boards!

[Mol_Bolom]

Hey, and thanks...Also, Yikes...I didn't realize there were that many forms of linux out there...

But before I continue with this, I do have a few other questions...
Would all the USB support still be there with any if not all? Especially for my Belkin wireless USB adapter...
Also, do any programs work on any of these systems? I am looking more into the science area, linguistics and mathematics. But wouldn't mind a bit of gaming to run on them as well...
And windows...I used Gnome, KDE, and Xwindows with 6.0 back in 1999, and that was on a 486dx with only 640kb of ram. Granted it ran slow running KDE and Gnome, but it worked, so would there be something like that with these other forms of linux systems? Such as DSL (Damn small linux)...
The main windows systems that I liked most were KDE and Gnome (of course), and the other two I think were part of the Xwindow system. One didn't have a program group button, instead I had to right click to get the program group, actually I liked this window best. The other one was just a window that had a shell prompt, that one I used for certain purposes, mainly because I had just come from using DOS and went to Windows 95, then Linux, and quite frankly I prefer a prompt over icons...But I have become used to using the Icons...

Also, here are some other things that I'd like to know before I got any one of those...
I use MikTex, TexnicCenter, FreeBasic, FreePascal with Lazarus, OpenOffice 2.0. Would these still work fine, if not better in DSL or one of the other old Linux systems?

I am sooo confused, LOL...

Thanks again...

[Mol_Bolom]

Oh, I also forgot to ask about creating a Live CD...I've only seen, download ISO file, so do I just copy that file to a CD and voila it's done? Or what...

Thanks...Perhaps I should stop talking in Coffe Lounge and go into a forum......

[jayd512]

Don't worry about asking questions! That's why were here

When you download the .ISO file, you'll have to burn the image as an .iso file. A good program for this is Alex Feinman's Power Toy. And as far as questions about system requirements, try Googling stuff like "Fedora 9 system requirements" and see what comes up. Good stuff! And by the way, try this version of Google :<Linux> - Google Search

[Mol_Bolom]

AAAAAAAAAAAH...My wifes gonna kill me...

We have another computer with Vista on it...I installed the ISO recorder on that computer because it downloads and moves much faster than this one does...

Anyway, I forgot to replace the disc that was already in the CD rom drive...The program stopped and showed a Message box with Yes No buttons...I replaced the CD with a writable one...Clicked OK, now the computer is dead...AAAAAAAAAAAh...

Hoo boy...I just love having fun with winblows...

Well, time for me to learn how to fix Vista I guess...Yeesh...

[jayd512]

What CD did you have in the tray??? And what happens when you turn on the PC?

[Mol_Bolom]

Well, I got windows back up, but it's extremely slow...I am trying to uninstall the program to see if that might fix the problem...So far I can't delete it using the Remove Programs manager...So I'm just trying to delete it off the harddrive then if I have to find it in the registry and remove it from there...I really hate doing things that way, but I've often found it's usually the only way...Perhaps you know a trick I don't......It's probably going to take me a few hours to figure it out...

The CD is a Maxell CD-R...Nothing special about it...

Oh, and when I start it in safe mode, the computer freezes, or slows down to almost a freeze after it loads the CDCdisc.sys file...

[Mol_Bolom]

Ok, now it's working...After I placed the disc in the drive and clicked on the OK button, it must have recorded some information to the disc, and the computer was constantly reading or doing something with the disc...I took it out, replaced it, and reloaded the ISO recorder...Now it's recording, and Vista is running...

It never ceases to amaze me at how simple something can be yet so difficult to find any information on such a thing happening, LOL...

[elija]

A couple of good alternatives for lower spec'd machines are

Vector Linux and Zenwalk. They both come with Live CDs and so can easily be tried. I think both of these are great for standard desktop use. Another one is Puppy Linux. Again it comes with a live CD. I really liked Puppy except for the fact you are always root (the administrator).

These distros cost a bit of download time and bandwidth and a blank CD, so try a few out and see which one you like.