Input and Recommendations on My Install...

[GBW88]

I know this is kinda a noob-ish question, but I figured I could turn to those much more learned than I in the way of installing a new Linux destro for my new needs. For just shy of a year now I have had a dual (tri, actually) boot enviroment on my laptop with Fedora Core 4, Auditor Security Collection, and Windows XP. Just thought I would mention that to put things into perspective of roughly my level knowledge.

Now, I recently came into possession of an Intel Pentium 3 (600 mhz, I think), with 64 megs of RAM, and, in total, 55 GB between it's two hard drives, and of course, a DVD ROM and floppy. My mission with the tower is this- making it into a server. However, in this server I AM looking for something like Gnome (i.e. a GUI), as I am going to use the computer for other non-serverly duties.

Now I put in my extra bells and whistles on it (wireless network, etc), and fired up the Fedora Install CDs and it ran very nicely.... Till it went to run Anaconda. Now it clocks in at about 20 mins to just start the graphical installer (or the text-driven one, for that matter).

So here is my question. Based on what I'm seeing now, Fedora 4 is gonna run like ass on this tower, so is there any kind of distro that would be recommended for what I'm looking for over Fedora? I just want something reasonably quick and reliable that has the features I want.

[a thing]

Fedora surely isn't for such old hardware. Try Slackware and/or DSL.

[GBW88]

DSL occured to me, but in my experience, it just struck my more as an interim distro more than something to base a server around. I'll look into slackware though.

Just to throw a few other names out, what about Debian? Would that be a good idea, or am I shooting blanks?

[Game master pro]

if you wanna make that into a server, i suggest upgrade the ram, you will hardly get to run x with 64mb :P

[GBW88]

Yea, I was worried that would be the case. I was hoping by putting in a fairly large swap partition I could remedy the issue a little bit. I had RAM lying around, but of course, my luck being what it is, I opened this computer and found it took a different kind.

[kitanis]

DSL or if you want a more reatured distro.. try Vector Linux 5.1 standard

[deek]

Yeah, the RAM, either for server use or simply a gui desktop, sounds like your biggest obstacle. I ran into similar problems, and with my old P2 350Mhz, I picked up two 128MB RAM DIMMS for like $36, with shipping...so, if you really want to use that tower, then I would definitely look at upping the RAM.

As for distro, I personally like slackware. If you go with 10.1, you will have Gnome on the install disks, if going 10.2, you will have to install that yourself after the fact. Dropline and Freerock are both solid paths to take to get Gnome in slackware.