distribution for an older computer

[kpetursson]

I want to install linux on an older computer
AMD K7 500mHz
128MB ram
40gb hard disk
cd-rom
ancient monitor (14" VGA not plug and play, with no power smart ability)

Could you recommend a relative simple to install distro, a non gui install would be fine, I would like to try the gnome gui (KDE would also be acceptable)

I want to install Apache, PHP and MySQL for web development purposes, I will not be doing any hosting on it (a least not from outside my LAN)

I've downloaded the latest version of several major distros (suse, fedora, debian) and have encountered problem when trying to install them. Generally it's a graphins problem the gui install swuished and super fuzzy in the middle of the screen, or the images on the gui on the screen each offset making if dificult to look at. A couple of them seem to run super slow from the cd-rom, or seem to freeze alltogether.

is there any way of formating the hard disk and then copying the installation CDs to the hard drive and installing from there?

any suggestions would be most welcome.


Kevin Petursson
--
"Everyone says quotable things everyday, but their not famous... so nobody cares."... Some Person

 

[TonyGroves]

Almost any general-purpose distro should work fine; I use Debian on a 350MHz/128MB machine (its installer is text-based which is an advantage). However, getting Gnome or KDE to run properly might be a problem. You would be better off going for a smaller window manager like Fluxbox instead. Also, you seem to have a problem with your video driver. Before installing, you would want to find out what video chipset you're using, and be sure to select the right driver and settings. If you still can't get it working, then maybe a cheap PCI video board would work better.

You have to install from CD(s); you can't read/write the hard disc until the OS has been installed ;-)

 

[Kozusnik]

Another thing to think about is the 14" monitor may only allow 640x480 resolution with maybe 16 bit color. Usually the video will be scrambled if the monitor can't handle it.

Any distro will be fine for that machine. It has enough power to run a distro with GUI. I run Mandrake at home, Red Hat and Mandrake at work. I have multiple hard drives with Ubuntu (excellent beginner distro), Debian, and FreeBSD. I actually have an old Alphastation with Debian on it (I think---I have't used it for a while). It seems to run fine.

Once you've configured youe box, you may want to turn GUI off. Edit /etc/inittab. Change the line "id:5:initdefault:" to "id:3:initdefault:". Then reboot. That will turn GUI off. Type startx, startkde, startgnome, etc. to run the gui again.

Mark

 

[damber]

I've got an old laptop (433mhz, 168mb ram) running kubuntu with kde quite nicely - very usable.

A smile is worth a thousand kind words. So smile, it's easy!

 

[stoolpigeon]

My experience with distros is primarily with Fedora, but I would think that most of them allow you to start the install in text mode. That gets rid of your display issues while you install. Then once you have it running from the command line, take some time to properly set up X and you should be up and running.

 

[jheine]

Any distro should be fine. If you want, check out Distrowatch to find the distro that will work best for you.

Seeing that you anly have 128MB of RAM, Fluxbox or FXce might be a better chouce in desktop. Also, a Gentoo-based distro might be good too. They are source-based distros that compile on the machine your installing it on. The instal is longer and more tedious, but since it is compiled on the machine your using, it becomes a bit more optimised for that machine.

The GUI problem sounds like a monitor configuration issue, in that the system is trying to use a resolution and refresh rate that your monitor does not support. Find the specs online for the monitor, mainly the supported resolutions and refresh rates, and make sure your monitor settings only use the supported resolutions and refresh rates. If you want to make it easy, limit it to a single setting that should work, such as 800x600 65MHz.

Jarrett

 

[kpetursson]

Should I be looking for the latest release of any given distro? or an older one?

Has anyone had experience for Xandros? Good? Bad? Indiferent?

Thanks.

Kevin Petursson
--
"Everyone says quotable things everyday, but their not famous... so nobody cares."... Some Person

 

[jheine]

Which release to run really will depend on how much legacy hardware you need to run. If you don't have legacy hardware (other than the pc and monitor listed above), then a newer release should be fine. If you have old PCI/ISA cards and peripherals your going to be using as well, then use a distro and/or version that is still using the 2.4.x kernel.

Can't say much about Xandros as I haven't used that distro. Check out [URL unfurl="true"]http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=xandros[/url] for more info.

Jarrett

 

[AdaHacker]

I've worked with Xandros 3 OCE (Open-Circulation Edition, i.e. the free-as-in-beer version) and it was OK. The installer was pretty good and it configured everything except WiFi out of the box. Then again, I was installing it on systems I specifically built to be Linux-compatible, so that's not really saying anything useful. Overall, it seemed good at the time, but it's not that great compared to the latest version of Kubuntu. I haven't tried version 4 yet, as the OCE hasn't yet been released and I don't feel like paying just to test it out.

As for installing older distributions, I guess that's a possibility, but I would only do it as a last resort. There's no guarantee it would help and you may well end up just wasting lots of time. It would probably be more productive to just boot to the command line and trouble-shoot your video problems.

 

[BobMCT]

You should have no problem running what you want on that particular old system. However, the RAM used by it is most likely available somewhere for free. I'd exchange what you have to max out your RAM capabilites (at least 512MB). It will make a BIG difference in performance for the services you reference.

 

[kpetursson]

free RAM? where would I even start looking for a gem like this?

Kevin Petursson
--
"Everyone says quotable things everyday, but their not famous... so nobody cares."... Some Person

 

[trojanman]

Send me a posted envelope and ill send you a few sticks of 128mb sdram thats been sitting in a box for years.

 

[kpetursson]

thanks for the offer trojanman, I will.

could you email me at firstname preiod lastname @simplot.com

my name is kevin petursson.

To the forum administartor... I know posting of email address is highly frowned upon, but I am unconcerned about spam at this address as it will cease to exist within about one month. I will edit my post to remove the email address mention tommorow. thank you for your understanding in this matter.



Kevin Petursson
--
"Everyone says quotable things everyday, but their not famous... so nobody cares."... Some Person

 

[kpetursson]

I check the computer. I have a single stich of 128mb pc100 sdram, with 2 available slots for more.

Thanks torjanman.


Kevin Petursson

 

[aebacon]

You can also try Xubuntu from the Ubuntu folks, it uses the Xfce desktop instead of Gnome or Kde and is suppose to be for older machines.

 

[rzs0502]

You might want to also check out Zenwalk Linux which is based on Slackware

http://www.zenwalk.org

My PIII 600 Mhz with 256Mb of RAM is cruising with it!


"If you always do what you've always done, you will always be where you've always been."

 

[jshurst]

I second Xubuntu. Xfce is a really cool, lightweight GUI. I haven't tried it on a computer with those exact specs though.