Favorite Distro for Older/Weaker Hardware

[bidi]

I think I might have to change my vote (even though it's not going to change in the poll). I voted for Slackware, but thinking of putting a computer with spare parts I have laying around I realized that Slack really can't be used. The computer specs are not bad, except for the HD: 500MHz K6-2, 64MB RAM and a 250MB HD (from a Compaq Contura laptop). The processor and RAM can handle almost any distro, but the HD space really limits things. Slack is really not a good option for this hardware since even if I install just the packages from "a/" I'll end up filling the HD since the packages include development headers. For this case, I'm thinking I'll have to go with Debian which can install a bare system in very little drive space.

Anyway, that's just somethng I ran into recently and thought I'd mention it.

[geminiguy]

Saxen OS is great for older systems..... P133 128Mb ram runs very nice SaxenOS - New Power for old hardware

[cayalee]

just to clarify, the link above should be: SaxenOS - New Power for old hardware

[geminiguy]

just to clarify, the link above should be: SaxenOS - New Power for old hardware

Man.... why are the M and the N so close together.... Thanks for fixing that... I guess that's what that "preview post" button is for

[valan]

LFS is the way to go. I built an optimized Linux From Scratch on my old 486 (25mhz, 20mb ram, 20mb, 200mb, and 420mb hard drives) and it ran probably 2x as fast as DSL, Deli, or any other distro I tried. So what if it took 2 months of non stop compiling to get it done (that's no joke). So what if I had to kill every possible process and all but one console to have enough memory to build glibc. It was by far the fastest that box has ever ran.

[bucky]

My vote goes to dsl because it is small @ 50meg, is a live cd which allowes testing before install, has a boot floppy for boxs that do not boot from cd, will accept a dial up connection and detect some internal modems...some..and installed to my dx2-66mhz with 32 meg ram with small swap on a 500 meg drive and ran x and allowed easy addition of low ram programs..the thumb install worked on win 98 and xp with the inconvienience of running xsetup to allow for different config.
slackware has been around for ever and older version will function well on older hardware. but install is required so a greater learning curve for new users..slax is interesting...feather is similar to dsl as a knoppix mini but I did not find it as versatile, deli was harder for me as was mulinux and basic linux although a great little floppy set was smaller than I desired. the others I used were bigger and needed more of something or other. So..dsl for me was easyist and worked on the least and best I had interest in useing it on
the disadvantage at the moment is some are not able to use the dsl forum and if this is your case you will have to search here or alternative forums for assistance.

[Digit]

i've tried em all.

DSL! how can ya not vote for it.

everything on it is geared for smallness and fastness. it's so light and nimble it will make you wonder just what your machine was upto when it had windows on it.

good choices tho, any of those would likely do the business on an old machine.


i recently tried resulinux just to see if it lived upto the hype of an extremely fast boot, like i had done many months prior with vector. it does! shame i cant seem to get it to speak english to me tho.


i often go around reccomending slax as well, it has such a cutesie easy plug n play style to it. great for us n00bs too. easier to expand and customise than dsl. i bet you could get dsl working on a p90 and have it run faster n more beautifully than win 95 ever did.

[NickWelder]

I voted for DSL. It is just perfect for older machines. Hell, it ran faster EMULATED on my computer than XP does natively! I am surprised as hell that it is only 50mb. Once you have it booted up it feels just like any large distribution. I love it! I wouldn't use it full time on a fast computer, that is what PCLinuxOS is for, but it makes a great emergency USB Flash drive distribution and if I get an old PC for a server I guarantee that DSL will be used for it.

[Skycastle]

im thinking of a number between dsmalllinux and slacker