Favorite Distro for Older/Weaker Hardware - 2009

[sagnik]

I vote for puppy though I've only used the live cd. I was able to remove the disk from the drive and run puppy from the RAM.

[Talia]

Slackware-very smooth and much stabler then any other minimal systems I've tried, and it runs like a dream on newer systems. Not to mention that SLAX is the best live distro I've tried, and I've tried a few.

[D-cat]

Puppy (at least 2.01 SM) has one major advantage over other distros incl. DSL when it comes to older hardware: it doesn't try to detect the hardware, but rather burdens the user to supply the details, then allows you the save the setting back to the CD when you get it all working.

Why is this an advantage? How many times have you tried to load a live CD on a computer just to have it lock up in the hardware detection phase? I've had that happen over a dozen times, some computers just will not set up correctly when configuring automatically. I have always been able to run puppy with full hardware support (after manual configuration) on machines where every other live desktop linux distro has failed to boot (even in failsafe).

Sure there are some "recovery" distros that always assume vesa video, no sound, and maybe basic networking support, but those are not what I call desktop distros and not what I'm referencing. Though not really the easiest to use, Puppy has always been reliable when and where I needed it to be.

[Charles4809]

I favor Tiny Me.

[Develos]

it is antiX

[alpha-X-geek]

Debian requires very little punch by default, so I'd say it's great for new and old hardware. Quite a few people have switched from Xubuntu to pure Debian due to the fact of it being light on resources.

[Rubberman]

For older hardware I like Gentoo because it can be tailored for only the components that you have, leaving out everything else.

[b2bwild]

For older hardware I like Gentoo because it can be tailored for only the components that you have, leaving out everything else.

and also it will take ages to install on older hardware. just because the every package is compiled and a full desktop edition is quite big.

[Rubberman]

and also it will take ages to install on older hardware. just because the every package is compiled and a full desktop edition is quite big.

Yes, it takes awhile, but not as long as all that. Just go get dinner while it's working! Also, you can configure it to use a lightweight desktop, or no desktop.

[Hal343]

Blueflops if its really old.