looking a better linux distro for an older system

**Jakykong** · 11-25-2005, 11:42 AM

Hi!
Alright, down and dirty - i have knoppix currently running this system, its an AMD K6 3D running at 300mhz.

the video card is some ASUS card - seems to be able to run knoppix just fine, allthough i do not know what make or model the card is (these are used parts from a friend

).

there is a 10/100 NIC lan card in it, as well as a linksys wireless B card. i am using the wirless card to connect to the internet by way of ndiswrapper.

the system has a 15gb hard drive on the primary IDE controller, a single 3.5" floppy drive, and a single 24x CD-ROM drive on the secondary IDE.

128mb RAM

Could anyone recommend a linux distro that would be well-suited to run on this computer (as a hard-disk install)?

Preference: as much like knoppix as possible, however, whatever i have to learn i'm glad to

I am relatively low-skill with linux . allthough i've used knoppix for a while, i have so many things that i require windows for i simply didn't have linux running enough to learn it. now with a KVM switch, and a "new" computer, i might have the chance.

Thanks for any and all help you can offer!

**OErjan** · 11-25-2005, 07:00 PM

Debian is one candidate, Slackware another, i run both on two LOW end machines one a 100Mhz the other 133Mhz and 64 and 72M ram respectively,
not the fastest around but work ok if i keep away from KDE, Gnome, Mozilla and similar LARGE programs.
your machine should work great with either and ICEwm or xfce as windowmanager and perhaps firefox for browser.

**Kowood** · 11-26-2005, 12:18 AM

lunar-linux.

**jjmac** · 11-26-2005, 04:30 AM

You may have some luck if you take the lid off, and with a touch and magnifying class look over the board/card(s) for stamp numbers. Especially on the edges. Then do a google on that. There is a hw list somewhere for Linux ???, can't remember, but, again -=- google is a penguins best friend, is it not

.

At least 128 mb of ram isn't to bad. Better than my last box. If you could bring it up to say --- 512 mbs, that would be the single most efficient way to boost its performance.

But -- anything really should run on it, the main impact on memory usage will be the wm you decide to install.

I know though, if it ain't kde, then it's gnome, or visa-versa. IMHO that is the one big flag pointing to the great microsofication of Linux at the present time. There are so many other choices !, just as functional, if not more so in some cases. And they all have their own sites. All a person has to do is look. Another one for google too.

There is a Linux site which lists a lot of different window managers, but again i can't quite remember its name.

The next issue there is the initial configuration, as in their raw state they all tend to be somewhat bland. If the site is active, then they will likely be providing example configuration scripts/packages, donated by users, sometimes including icons etc. Use those for the initial setup. A person can't be expected to just jump into a wm's configuration style and just take off with it, so to speak. So using donated pre-configs is the way to go. Then just tweak to suite.

I'll mention www.fvwm.org as they do provide these facilities, but also understand that it is the wm of my choice, so i am biased in that regard. The others may well better suit yourself, such as -=- flukbox etc -=-

Sounds like a reasonable box for pretty much anything really

(more ram)

jm

Some spell edits, fri 16/12/2005.

**OErjan** · 11-26-2005, 09:56 AM

hmm, That ASUS card should be possible to ID with lspci in a console.
and yes fvwm is lightweight and configurable, i use it myself sometimes, ICEwm is one of my favourites though, slightly heavier, but...