lbbros Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 Hello! At work, I was just given a "new" computer. It's a HP Vectra, Pentium-class (not sure about clock speed) with 16 Mb RAM and 1.5 Gb HD. Now, I want to wipe out Windows from this computer and install a flavor of Linux. The matter is, it's not really THAT powerful, so what do you suggest me? Which distro should I install? (preferably one that uses a packaging system so that I can update easily). I *might* be able to add more memory, but I'm not sure... Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 The package system is no good, if you can't find packages for it. So I think the best thing to do is to look into Mandrake9 hardware database, or other sources, to see if all your hardware is Linux-compatible. Then I would install Mandrake9 or latest Debian or Slackware (I never used those two, but people tend to recommend them). Only, don't use Gnome or KDE as your desktop. Running modern applications in graphical mode is already much load for such an old computer. See this thread if it helps: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=518 Also, I wrote this on old club-nihil boards: -------------------------------------------------------- You may be interested by my experience with Mdk8.1 on a P150MMX, 32MB RAM laptop: I have two setups, one with Gnome, one without. I tried KDE but it was unusably slow. With Gnome, and IceWM as the window manager, I have a comfortable full-featured desktop, usable for small applications (internet, mail, games) I use IceWM-light standalone (no Gnome) if I need more windows opened at the same time, or big applications (OpenOffice, Netscape). I use virtual consoles a lot nonetheless. When I want to have a faster feel, I often simply startx a single application from the command line (eg: startx /usr/bin/sol). That's why the laptop is set-up to boot in runlevel 3. After many tries, I decided not to compile any sources tarball bigger than 1.5MB. It is slow. -------------------------------------------------------- Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jglen490 Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 I would suggest that any recent distro will work on that machine, as long as you are sure that it's a Pentium class PC. The things to look for are the apps that you run. If it's a fairly low speed CPU, P100 - P133 or so, you may want to run some lighter apps. The biggest problem could be the amount of RAM. 16MB is not much and certainly not good enough to run any kind of significant X window apps. If you can go to 64MB or better, you'll be happier. I run an older P120 laptop. When I went from the 40MB that it came with to 72MB the difference was night and day in terms of stability and the variety of apps that I could run. I still use a lighter wm, IceWM, on the machine, but it will run the KOffice suite and OpenOffice.org (once it loads) with no problems. Mozilla, mozilla-mail, and xmms all run just fine on it, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 ...and OpenOffice.org (once it loads)... :lol: That's true ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramfree17 Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 slackware. contrary to popular belief, it has a packaging system. and the good side is you can learn more using it. and with 16MB ram and light apps, it could be a (relatively) speed demon. :grin: i swear one day ill install slackware on my old P166 ciao! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jglen490 Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 Everything has a packaging system whether its gzipped tar, or deb, or rpm. There are undoubtedly others, too. But the real point is that Linux is Linux and everything else is a distro problem. You can run Mandrake (on a Pentium, or better) in as lean an environment as you want and you can make slack as bloated as you want. Each distro does their default installation differently, but every distro can be customized -- down or up. There will always be more joy with more RAM, that's just the way it is, and faster CPUs will feel better, and that's just the way that is, too. So to get back to original question, you can run any distro on a Pentium with 16MB, but not all the features that are desirable will work right in a limited hardware environment. So customize!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aru Posted December 22, 2002 Report Share Posted December 22, 2002 i swear one day ill install slackware on my old P166 :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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