Fastest Distro from CLI

[WhoIsThere]

Hi.

I know this might be a matter of contention, but I'm hoping for some feedback... possibly from a distro jumper.

I want to setup one, or two, of my older PCs to run a Linux. One for running some (modern) media apps, and the other for some basic document/photo/office apps.

The first test PC will be one with a PIII, 800Mhz CPU. Does anyone know which distro will run media apps the fastest, from a command line, on this? I'm thinking in the line of apps like Mplayer or VLC, Rhythmbox or Aqualung, etc..

Also would running older Windows 95/98 games through WINE be possible on a PC this old? Are any of the older releases of WINE 'lighter'?

[reed9]

When you say "from a command line" do you mean you want to a console only install, no GUI? (mplayer can even play movies using the framebuffer and no GUI.)

Check out this blog. The author has many posts on running light distros on legacy hardware.

The fastest modern distro that would run on your machine is probably Crux. But it is not for the faint of heart.

Other good options are Arch, Debian, Slitaz, TinyCore, or Antix.

How much RAM do you have? That will be a more limiting factor.

In general, any distro that aims to be very new user friendly tends to be heavier on resources.

I have almost no experience with WINE so can't help there, but there are many fun, light and basic linux games you could run.

[rokytnji]

Other good options are Arch, Debian, Slitaz, TinyCore, or Antix.

antiX-forum - View topic - Further adventures in Anti-Xless

All apps you want to run come from Debian Testing Repositories.

[WhoIsThere]

When you say "from a command line" do you mean you want to a console only install, no GUI?

Yes. I'm used to using command line in DOS, DOSBox, Windows, but I'm just starting to learn CLI in a Linux environment.

(mplayer can even play movies using the framebuffer and no GUI.)

When running Mplayer from a framebuffer in Debian, I get a mad flickering. Do I need to configure, or install, something relating to the FB?

Check out this blog. The author has many posts on running light distros on legacy hardware.

Cool. Nice site.

The fastest modern distro that would run on your machine is probably Crux. But it is not for the faint of heart.

Hmmm. Looks interesting. I don't know if it has everything I'd want in it's repositories though. Do you know off-hand how compiling in this works? If there were instructions on how to compile apps in Gentoo, OpenSUSE, or Debian, which would mostly resemble the method?

Other good options are Arch, Debian, Slitaz, TinyCore, or Antix.

Hoping to avoid trying all of the most recognizable distros, but I suppose I could slowly whittle down the options. One of the reasons I asked about the OT.

How much RAM do you have? That will be a more limiting factor.

512 MB, PC133.

antiX-forum - View topic - Further adventures in Anti-Xless

All apps you want to run come from Debian Testing Repositories.

I"m comfortable running X apps from a command line via 'startx appname', or 'xinit appname -- :n'.

[reed9]

Hmmm. Looks interesting. I don't know if it has everything I'd want in it's repositories though. Do you know off-hand how compiling in this works? If there were instructions on how to compile apps in Gentoo, OpenSUSE, or Debian, which would mostly resemble the method?

I don't use Crux, so I'm not too familiar, but as I understand they have a ports like system of build scripts for packages. The build scripts are called pkgfiles.

Arch and Crux are quite similar but Arch is not a source based distro, so it may be a better option. Compiling on a low spec machine is, in my opinion, tedious. Running console only I can't imagine there would be a noticeable performance difference between the two, if indeed there is much of one to begin with.

Not sure on the mplayer flickering. It's been a long time since I've run mplayer like that.

[WhoIsThere]

Arch and Crux are quite similar but Arch is not a source based distro, so it may be a better option.

...

Compiling on a low spec machine is, in my opinion, tedious.

What does 'source based mean', based on another distro like Ubuntu on Debian?

I'd only compile smaller apps like the SVN builds of a video player, music player, or emulator. Is Arch fairly easy to do that on?

[reed9]

Source based means they don't provide precompiled software packages, but build scripts. You compile the software yourself. Gentoo is an example of this.

Category:Source-based Linux distributions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[reed9]

I'd only compile smaller apps like the SVN builds of a video player, music player, or emulator. Is Arch fairly easy to do that on?

Yes, Arch has a full ports like system that is very easy to use, as well as normal binary package repositories and a user-created repository of build scripts, called AUR.

[WhoIsThere]

Okay.

I'll probably do a minimal Arch install from a net image, and post back with the results tommorow.

Thanks for the help.

[hazel]

Hmmm. [Crux] Looks interesting. I don't know if it has everything I'd want in it's repositories though. Do you know off-hand how compiling in this works? If there were instructions on how to compile apps in Gentoo, OpenSUSE, or Debian, which would mostly resemble the method?

I use Crux and I like it very much. But it doesn't have a big choice of software. There are three official repositories: core, opt and xorg. Core gives you the command line, and opt and xorg allow you to add a very basic desktop. A semi-official repository called contrib allows you to add some heavyweight apps like OpenOffice and the Gimp. Beyond that there are a number of privately maintained unofficial repos that will give you things like gnome and KDE.

Compiling is done automatically by the Crux package manager, prt-get, which downloads source code from the repositories that you have enabled and compiles it in situ. It's very similar to the way Gentoo does it. If you want to install something that isn't in the repositories, then you have to compile by hand.