klemm Posted September 2, 2004 Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 Hi One of my friend asked me other day what linux he should install He has a P200 and 72K od ram & 3G hdd. He uses the computer as a desktop, Surf the net and write emails, Sometimes some textediting and bookkeeping. I just wonder what to suggest to him. Would be a good chance to get one "turned into Linux". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted September 2, 2004 Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 Well, first, if you mean 72k of ram, no opperatin system that I know of will even boot. Chances are, with a p200 and a 3GB hdd, you mean 72MB, in which case, there's several versions of linux that will work very nicely. Mandrake will be 'do-able' but you'll have to use XFCE or some other less resource intensive desktop than kde or gnome. HOever, I think mandrake is a mistake. If you look around, there's a lot of distros that are specificaly built for older systems to do just the sort of thing you want. I'm sure that someone ehre with a little better knowledge of the various distros can tell you something more usefull. Either way, you should come back and lut us all know what you went with and how well it worked. Good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiedra Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 (edited) Peanut Linux would be a good choice. Edit: Mepis and Knoppix not good choices, but definalty Peanut. Edited September 4, 2004 by spiedra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 Well knoppix is KDE so probably not the best..unless you use it as a debian installer but then it might struggle with the install with 72MB... I have a P266 running Debian with 128MB RAM ... and it works fine for surfing, email and basic stuff. The main problem is installation.... Most modern linux use syslinux to boot the installer and this loads to memory... the alternative is the liveCD and again into memory... M<andrake tends to be a bit bloated but if you slim it down and turn off services etc it should really be little different to other distro's, its just you need to hunt stuff down and turn it off. If you wanted a slightly more challenging install then Gentoo would be ideal but more time consuming to get up and running. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero0w Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 72MB Ram, is it a memory combination of 32MBx2 + 4MBx2 ? Anyway, XFCE is more fitting with such limited memory resource. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 I have no idea why Mandrake would not do as well as any other distro..? Just make sure you don't start any unneccessary service at boot, better yet, don't even install. -Use icewm or something like that, keep the memory footprint small. Just check with the command 'free' how much mem you have, try the various apps and compare. Don't pay too much attention to buffered mem. - try to boot to non graphical mode, then startx. This way, kdm/mdkkdm/gdm don't get loaded thus don't need running/mem. compare that too if you want to. Realise with that kind of pc you'll have trouble with 'rich content' websites... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 aRTee explained better than me I think.... The basic thing is make Mandrake starts off with lots of 'bloat' and you need to spend time saying not to install it....its not really bloat, I use 6 browsers (opera/Firefox/Konq/Moz/Dillo/Epiphany) the first 4 most days but you doint need em.... and with a 3GB disk you need to choose .. else you'll have 5 word processors and ..... etc... The difference is some distro's have already made this choice for you.... whereas Mandrake you need to make it yourself.... Most people install lots (if they have a fast machine and oogles of disk) and then probably never even get rid of what they dont use! The nice thing with Mandrake is you can use URPMI to add/remove progs and have the whole lot to choose from and well categorised.... if somethings a memory hog you can find an equivalent but less memory hungry app. Debian gives you even more choice... and not well categorised... seriously you never know what 90% of the apps are! Once you do the install I think mandrake is probably as good as any... I'd consider gentoo if you really wanna get down to basics but otherwise Mandrake ..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 (edited) knoppix, mepis, mandrake and any other distro that uses kde or gnome is not a good choice on this comp. kde requires 84 mb ram. gnome a bit less but still too much. on http://www.distrowatch.com you have a big bunch of distros, like peanut, buffalo, vector and others that use icewm, xfcwe, fluxbox or other lightweight desktop environments. there are even some distros that are especially made for p166 and the like machines. i would add for these special distros' the link right now if i could, but for any unknown reason, distrowatch is down since half a hour. i guess they will be right back in business in two hours. Edited September 3, 2004 by arctic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted September 4, 2004 Report Share Posted September 4, 2004 Well knoppix is KDE so probably not the best..<{POST_SNAPBACK}> WRONG. At lilo 'knoppix desktop=xfce' Welcome to knoppis running XFCE. There's a couple of other desktops installed as well. Not sure which one off the top of my head. However, after looking around, I agree that peanut might be a good way to go. The reason I discouraged mandrake is that there is just way moer in mandrake than will be usefull on that system. Even the current kernel is bloated for a p200. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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