light distros, any suggestions?

[habilis]

I'm looking for a distribution that will run nicely on machines with a 200Mhz-350Mhz processors. Not Pentium 2's, but Cyrix MII's, AMD K6-2's, etc and maybe a Pentium Pro.

I tried pup-431-k2.6.21.7-scsi-intel_modems.iso on a 250MHz Cyrix MII machine but it was quite slow.

I'm also looking for distros to put on computers in the 900 - 1400 MHz range (P3's, and Durons). I've tried Xubuntu on a 1Ghz P3, but it was a bit slow.

I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks.

[Rubberman]

There are a number of distributions that target the older/slower systems such as you mention. See The Linux Home Page at Linux Online for a very complete list of distributions, including minimalist ones such as you are looking for. Besides DSL (Damned Small Linux), there are a lot of others listed there.

[habilis]

Thanks for the link Rubberman.

For the older systems I found Deli Linux, AntiX, and U-lite, in addition to Puppy which I already tried on a 250MHz MII and it wasn't fast enough (although I may have used the wrong version for the hardware)

DeLi Linux
U-lite Linux | Where Speed Meets Ease
Main Page - antiX

I'm still looking for something for the 1Ghz systems.

[elija]

I don't know how much memory you have but it might be worth looking at Austrumi

[cmiket]

I have looked at slax before but haven't gotten around to trying it. It is a minimal install that looks very nice.

[Rubberman]

The biggest factor for speed is memory. If you are short of memory, then yuo are hitting the disc to swap virtual memory in/out of core. How much RAM do you have? Also, what services are you running? You can reduce the memory footprint by:

1. Disabling unneeded services
2. Disabling the X-Windows GUI, or selecting a "thinner" desktop manager, such as TWM.
3. Rebuilding the kernel to remove unneeded drivers, etc.
4. Using a distribution that lets you configure the resulting OS exactly to your hardware needs, such as Gentoo.

Many good distributions for building a minimalist system are Gentoo-derived, or Gentoo itself. You configure the kernel with support for just the hardware you need, and only install the software and services you need, which as a result are built from source with the emerge package manager system that Gentoo uses.

[habilis]

I checked out the slax website. Is making a custom slax build something that anyone can truly easily learn to do? You always read that slackware is one of the more beginner un-friendly distros. Is Slax an easier version of slackware?

Rubberman:

How/Where can one learn about services, kernel rebuilding, etc. and building a custom distro?

I need to learn the fundamentals, because I'm always seeing these 'building projects' and if I attempt to use them I find its all beyond my knowledge.

[Rubberman]

There is a lot of useful documentation about this sort of stuff on The Linux Documentation Project. You can find Gentoo at Gentoo Linux -- Gentoo Linux News.

[cmiket]

I checked out the slax website. Is making a custom slax build something that anyone can truly easily learn to do? You always read that slackware is one of the more beginner un-friendly distros. Is Slax an easier version of slackware?

Slax is apparently a very simplified version of slackware. You can customize your build online my using the base system and adding the modules that you want, then burning the ISO to a cd. Or you could just install the base system and go to the website to get the other packages you want.

[oz]

Tiny Core might work for you. It's stripped of features, and is extremely lightweight so it should run fast enough. It can be installed to a hard drive although it was designed to run from system RAM.