Microsoft OS Support well and truly over: Need replacement (I DID read the FAQ!!!)

[purplegreendave]

OK, here's the lowdown.

M$ has stopped supporting my OS (WinME) a while now, and now that Mozilla and AVG are starting to drop it too, security is going to become an issue - fast.
I tried this out a year or so back - out of nothing but curiosity - but today the PC seems to have died and I may have to reinstall the OS. Seeing as I'll be going to that trouble, I figure I may as well load something even remotely modern!

I need something that is:
1) Light on resource requirements. I only have 128MB RAM to work with, alongside a 1.0 Ghz AMD proc and an Nvidia Gfx card (RIVA TNT2).
2) Not much different to Windows. It's the family computer, and whilst they aren't exactly computer illeterate, if anything goes wrong I'll hear all about it! They need to be able to jump in, so it needs to be similar (not necessarily a complete rip-off though).

It'll be used mainly for music ripping & listening, web surfing, e-mail etc. No gaming and few/no intensive programmes (although I'd like to get Gimp & Ardour running).
It needs to be able to access my external HD (where all the music is stored) and here's the biggy - use a wireless USB dongle (don't mind a once-off ndiswrapper set up though, I've done it with this card in DSL).


Going by the FAQ, the quizzes turn up
Mandriva
openSUSE
Freespire
Ubuntu
But all of these list higher sys req's than mine on their site (and if Xubuntu doesn't work (see below), what are the chances of regular Ubuntu!?)

I've tried Puppy and Xubuntu before. Puppy I didn't really like at all tbh, and Xubuntu never worked to start - it never even booted into the OS - it just stayed on the splash screen forever (literally - I left it on two days solid once - the CD-ROM never stopped thrashing the disk but still nothing happened).


I think I have enough here for you guys, but if there's anything else just shout.


Zenwalk looks OK, what do you think?

[oz]

Zenwalk looks OK, what do you think?

Yeah, I like Zenwalk.

It's available by free download so you should try it and see what you think.

[purplegreendave]

Wow - fast reply!
Is there any reason why it wouldn't do what I want?

Only, it's a ~560MB d/l which will take a while - I'd like some reassurance first!

[oz]

Yeah, I'm not sure how well it will meet your #2 need above.

In my opinion, there aren't any Linux distros that meet that need. But then again, not being like Windows is the good thing about Linux.

Hope it works out really well for you.

[purplegreendave]

K, I'll try d/ling tomorow morning so and work from there.
Thanks!

(Still open to alternatives , until I d/l anyway!)

[i92guboj]

Puppy linux and DSL might be an option for you. But if you have the possibility, I would add some more ram, if possible. That will help to improve the overall experience, but they should work with 128 mb as well.

The rest of distros you listed are not suitable for such a low amount of ram unless you are prepared for a lot of hacking and customization.

Luck on your new quest

[Freston]

Most if not all the distro's you mention are heavy weights.

I've installed Vector once on a machine like yours, over a Win2000 install. Vector ran pretty good. Vector uses it's own wireless setup&configure tools. And although I've never tried it myself, I know setting up ndiswrapper is among the options.

Also, the free as in beer edition uses xfce, which is not dissimilar to the Redmond interface. In fact, many people don't even notice the difference But appearances can be deceiving, because there is difference... oh yeah

One other plus is that all multimedia codexes ship with the OS.

[colonelcrayon]

Zenwalk is a really good distro. You could also consider installing SLAX. It's usually used as a live CD, but is great installed as well.

[Segfault]

As already mentioned, your 1 GHz CPU and video card are OK. The amount of RAM is your bottleneck. I once made a real lean install of XFCE [on Gentoo] for my neighbour, 900 MHz P3 with 128 MB of RAM. I monitored it over SSH and every time he opened 3+ sites in Firefox it went swapping.
Can't you get more RAM from your local geeks, they may have it in the drawer for just in case?