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My parents gave me their old Pentium 100mhz CPU with case and motherboard. Since Windoze has a tendancy to hog resources a bit on a computer that slow, I was thinking of installing Linux on the thing, making it the primary OS. Since this is an older machine (there will be 64 megs of RAM on it once I get going), any tips on what distros I should use, types of setup, window managers, etc..., that would run good on a Pentium 100? I've got the Mandrake 7.2 release on CD here, so would a custom install with that be OK? I'm just worried about what types of software would work and what wouldn't. Any thoughts as to what you'd do with it?
Probably the best reason for using Linux is to utilise your old hardware. If you have never installed Linux before, then you may want to read up a bit at http://www.linuxdoc.org for some specific info on problems which may arise.
Mandrake is a very good newbie distro (well it served me well!), and the 7.2 version is up to date with most things, if not all. However, I dont know how good it is on a low spec machine, because I use Mandrake on my suped up windoze machine. Maybe someone else can tell you there.
You will definately want at least 32megs of RAM for your distro.
If you feel really adventurous, and you sound like you have another comp, then you may want to install smoothwall and set up a server on the old comp. Its just a suggestion.
I've installed Mandrake 7.2 on my main system, no problem, but it's a PIII 700, so nothing in the distro will run too slow. In other words, I didn't know if there was a place that showed the system requirements for things, or has any advice on what can and can't run on the system. So advice on Window Managers, Applications, Web Tools, etc... would be great. This computer will probably be used part time by my wife, and by me, so it's got to have functional stuff for my computer illeterate wife, and power tools for the geek in me (I've got a bit of Unix and PERL experience, so Linux doesn't really scare me too bad, but I figured I'd ask before I go diving in).
I use Mandrake 7.0 on an old machine. A Pentium 66 is what is reported by Bios. It has 48 Megs of Ram and a 1 GIG HD. Now I will not swear it's speed is as fast as the same distro on my other AMD K6II 450 with 96 Megs Ram and a 10 GIG HD but it sure is faster than when the old machine ran Windows! I had Win95 on the older machine first but it was at a slow crawl most of the time. Now with Linux it runs smooth for the most part but multiple apps open will bog it down some. I know that if you are brave you can triple your speed almost by not using X window system and stay to the shell. This does not seem to be an option for your wife though as she is not as heartily versed in multiple OS's as you. All should work well for you using X but beware the resource draw of the GUI as in all OS's. Stick to as few apps at a time as possible and all will work better than that OTHER OS.....M$ Windoze. lol
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