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I have an eight year old computer. It has a pentium III, 550 MHz; 512 MB of PC-100 RAM; two twelve GB HDDs. I tried Ubuntu and Mandriva but they were unbearably slow. Even XP is faster. Which distro of Linux should i use? I am probably going to use it to surf the web, and store some data, so it should be fast, and have Fat32 support so my workgroup computers can access the data. Any ideas about what i should use?
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May want to try it's prior version as well as DSL (Damn Small Linux.)
Bob
Don't use linux on a old computer. Use window 98. But if you must then you could get damn-small-linux or puppy a try but no garranttee that it will be fast though.
These distributions will install on your computer.
Easy: Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse
Intermediate: Debian, Slackware
Advanced: Building from source.
Linux will work on most computers that have been made in the past twenty years.
Tips when installing linux:
Only enable the services that you need.
Go for a simple desktop. Gnome and KDE are pretty but they eat up memory. Try Xfce or fluxbox instead.
Build the system from source. This means installing the base system first. After that, you install X, then a desktop manager,then audio, then SMB&CIFS, and then others.
Resources not fast enough?
Then install one of these: DEbian, Gentoo, Zenwalk, Slackware.
Your work group computers need to have SMB enabled. Remote dektop can be enabled from linux.
More questions? Ask the forum of any of the distros mentioned.
Suggest you try Puppy and/or SLAX. Both can be installed on and boot from a USB "stick". Puppy runs entirely in RAM (512MB is plenty), and can also be run from a "multisession" CD/DVD.Both have helpful forums.
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