Hardware Requirement for Linux Installation

[HBN]

Hello Everyone,
I am new to this world of linux so need big time help from you guys. I have a old Server machine (IBM Netfinity 5500) 400MHz with 512 MB RAM. Which Linux version will work on such machine? It has about 30GB of space. I did try FC 6 but it was not working.

Tks

[techieMoe]

Your RAM and harddrive space is more than enough for any distribution, but your processor speed means you might want to try a distro that doesn't have particularly high graphical requirements. Fedora, SuSE and Mandriva tend to use more heavyweight GUIs (KDE, Gnome) whereas Damn Small and Xubuntu do not. Any distribution should give you the option to use a different desktop environment however, including Fedora Core 6. What's not working, specifically?

[HBN]

Thank you for your response. The problem I am facing with FC-6 is that first the media check that I get is not correct where as I copied the iso from an authentic Linux ftp site. Secondly, the screen turns white after sometime and nothing happens after that as soon as I start with the installation. So if you can recommend any specific website from where I can download Linux (any version that can work with this Hardware specs).

[techieMoe]

Thank you for your response. The problem I am facing with FC-6 is that first the media check that I get is not correct where as I copied the iso from an authentic Linux ftp site.

The location from which you downloaded the file doesn't matter as much as the checksum of the file. There should be an MD5SUM or SHA1SUM file on the FTP site where you downloaded the ISO file that you can use to verify that the download completed correctly.

As for the media check program: ignore it. Fedora Core's media check has given false negatives before and this is a documented problem. Just because the media check says "FAIL" doesn't necessarily mean you have a bad disc.

Secondly, the screen turns white after sometime and nothing happens after that as soon as I start with the installation. So if you can recommend any specific website from where I can download Linux (any version that can work with this Hardware specs).

Try installing in text mode. I believe you can do this in Fedora Core by typing linux text at the very first boot prompt when you start up with the DVD.

[HBN]

I am now receiving this error message

"An error occured unmounting the CD. Please make sure you're not acessing /mnt/source from the shell on tty2 and then click O.K to retry".