Best version of Linux for an outdated PC?

[Rocksaurus]

Thanks again for everyone's input... Doing a little bit of reading of my own Damn Small and Vector Linux look like my best bets due to the outdated hardware I'm going to be running this on. Since this is my first go-around with Linux which of these two is more user friendly? They both seem to be geared towards my dumpster derived system. I should probably install one on VPC before actually going through with this to see how it works, unless that's a bad idea? I was a little surprised Microsoft would even let me install Linux using VPC, so I'm a little wary of the results I'd get installing and/or running Linux in VPC, any advice there? Thanks again.

 

[jim.]

I don't recall if either are as "user-friendly" as some would want. I was used to Vector when I tried it because I had used slackware for years. It is a very straightforward install and configuration. Most distro installs have become relatively painless over the last two or three years, particularly if you don't care about wiping the entire install drive.

I think trying it out in Virtual PC is an excellent idea. Particularly if you have no linux experience at all. It will at least give you a feel for the filesystem and configuration layout. With low-resource programs, you are going to need to be comfortable with the command line to get a lot of stuff done (OSX it is not).

Jim

 

[jim.]

Uh, that hasn't been true since about Red Hat 6. Quite a few years ago...

You are probably right. The last time I tried RedHat was with versions 5-7. I then ditched for Slack, and haven't followed it since. My old prejudice still holds and I wouldn't wish RedHat on anyone. I remain steadfast in my distro bigotry

Jim

 

[Mechcozmo]

Thanks again for everyone's input... Doing a little bit of reading of my own Damn Small and Vector Linux look like my best bets due to the outdated hardware I'm going to be running this on. Since this is my first go-around with Linux which of these two is more user friendly?

Damn Small Linux (DSL) is pretty easy-- burn the CD and stick it in. But beyond that, its a mess. As in, nice GUI for apps but you can get a crash-course in the command line quickly. At least their forum isn't so bad. Usually nice to lend a hand.

 

[Rocksaurus]

Playing around briefly in DSL I didn't really find a need for the command line but obviously as I use it more I guess I could run into a need? I think my final choice will be Vector Linux since it's got the lowest system requirements, and my dumpster system is well... low. Now if I could somehow find a free wireless card...

 

[jim.]

Playing around briefly in DSL I didn't really find a need for the command line but obviously as I use it more I guess I could run into a need? I think my final choice will be Vector Linux since it's got the lowest system requirements, and my dumpster system is well... low. Now if I could somehow find a free wireless card...

Be sure to get an Orinoco or Prism based card. Those play nicest with Linux.

Jim

 

[Rocksaurus]

Cool. Where can I get one for free?

 

[panphage]

I would STRONGLY suggest against gentoo. While it's a cool idea, for older PC's, it's a bad idea. It's a "source based" distro, which means that everything you run is compiled from source. So, installed something like mozilla (installing = compiling) may take hours! I installed KDE on a 1.8g, with 1gig of ram, and it took over a day to compile. I'd try Ubuntu, if you're not familiar with linux, try a live CD, ubuntu has one, so does knoppix. good luck!

This is just not true. It looks like you didn't read up on portage. You can choose from three install "stages", build all, build most, use packages. Gentoo is actually BEST for outdated hardware because it makes it EASY (ok but still slow) to tweak and build for your slower machine. I wouldn't recommend Gentoo for a linux newbie, but if you know the command line ok (not necessarily guru but not "what does grep mean" either) the install directions are spectacular. You can even build the system on a different (faster) machine using the tweaks for your slow machine and then copy the system over. You *can* build everything from source (which is a good idea because of the optimizations) but you don't have to. And if you don't you're not taking advantage of gentoo's greatest strength. I'd issue an emerge for a big package with a lot of dependencies when I didn't have anything better to do for a few days.

And you shouldn't be installing KDE or OpenOffice on an crappy old box anyway. Use fluxbox and abiword.

 

[jim.]

Cool. Where can I get one for free?

No clue. But this is a case where the beggar should try to be the chooser unless you want to work with ndiswrapper (which isn't too hard and works relatively well, but most distros don't include it meaning you need a net connection to set up your net connection).

Jim

 

[i_am_a_cow]

The big problem with Ubuntu or Gentoo is they default to "build everything from scratch". That's going to take a long time on a modern machine - on the one you describe it's going to be positively painful. When you hear someone say they "installed Gentoo over the weekend" you may not realize that's basically a literal statement.

Don't go with Slack unless you're already quite comfortable with Linux, or you're intending to learn Linux the hard way.

You don't mention how much memory you've got - really that's more important than processor speed when it comes to using some of the heavier window managers. If you're under 256MB, then I'd agree w/ the advice to stay away from Gnome and especially KDE. My fave was always Enlightenment, but that really is not friendly at all for beginners.

For ease of install, I'd go with Fedora Core 3 or Mandrake. But if you don't have a fast internet connection available, look up your local LUG (Linux Users Group) and see if someone will give/lend you installation CDs.

OK, what are you talking about. Ubuntu is debian based. You don't have to build ANY packages. It even uses debian packages quite well (I haven't found one that doesn't work). And you say "build everything from scratch" like it's something to stay away from. For an old computer, I would definitely recommend using gentoo. Building from scratch means optimization, which means speed. Prebuilt packages simply won't be as fast, as they are optimized for any system with the same architecture. And yes, KDE is slow. As for Gnome, if you want a nice gui, stick to Gnome 1.4. It runs quite well on older systems (well that is a bit of an overstatement, I guess). Fluxbox and Openbox are quite nice. Make sure that your windows update with wireframe, otherwise they will not draw very well, and it will get annoying and slow.

Do not take the "ease of install" way on an old system. You won't get very good performance.

Good luck with Gentoo, it will take a little while, but it's great. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask. And don't get anxious or surprised if compiles go longer than 24 hours. It will all be worth it in the end.

PSS: Don't be discouraged installing Gentoo as your first Linux. I did Gentoo as my first Linux and I even got it up on a FireWire Drive.

 

[i_am_a_cow]

Thanks for the correction. I didn't know Ubuntu had that option available - but the people I know using Ubuntu are guys who previously used Gentoo, likely just because it was the "new kid on the block" (which of course now means Ubuntu not Gentoo). For them I think building from source is part of the fun.

Of course these guys will quickly abandon Ubuntu as soon as the next new distro comes along...

Um, Ubuntu is completely the opposite of what you think it is. It's the absolute easiest linux of all. Do realize that it's basically Debian packaged up all pretty and easy. There is NO COMPILING INVOLVED in an Ubuntu install, whatsoever (unless you make your own kernel or installer or something, but that's obviously going to require compiling). I have Ubuntu installed here on the Powerbook because I was too lazy to go through with another gentoo install when I won't even be able to get airport drivers . Apt is the laziest thing ever, but it's good for new people.

PS: I even installed Gentoo on an external firewire drive, and it was very hard. It boots fine. Maybe firewire boots are supported in the kernel by now, I don't know. I had to build and InitRD though and stuff like that. It was quite a hack, but very satisfying in the end.

EDIT:

I just looked at the xfce window manager site and I see that it has basically evolved in to more than just a window manager. It's really a desktop environment. And it's sure to be much quicker than GNOME. I'd go with xfce for the gui.

 

[jim.]

Building from scratch means optimization, which means speed. Prebuilt packages simply won't be as fast, as they are optimized for any system with the same architecture.

I think this is a common misconception amongst gentoo users. Compiling with gcc -O2 -mcpu=i586 -pipe on a server farm makes little to no speed difference with using gcc -O3 -mcpu=i586 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer on your own machine.

GCC isn't a miracle magic compiler that takes into account your chipset, cards, drive, etc. It just optimizes according to cpu instruction sets, which are standard. Now you might see a difference moving from -mcpu=i586 to -mcpu=athlon, but not much. Most of the optimizations come from that -O2 flag that everyone uses. Take a look at the gcc man page sometime, it's actually pretty neat.

In the case of a P2, a generic optimization to the i586 architechture is just as good no matter where it is compiled.

So in this case, no, gentoo is not worth the time and it will never be for these older chipsets. At most it might save you a nanosecond on some video computation. You'll get a bigger speed boost by getting a faster spinning hard drive. The best thing going for gentoo is its portage system, which is my favorite package manager by far. I loved it when I used gentoo.

Jim

 

[Rocksaurus]

A couple of questions...

No clue. But this is a case where the beggar should try to be the chooser unless you want to work with ndiswrapper (which isn't too hard and works relatively well, but most distros don't include it meaning you need a net connection to set up your net connection).

Jim

What is "ndiswrapper"? And how will it help me get a free wireless card?

Also, jim., you said something about gentoo's "portage system" in the above post... Sorry for the Linux newbiness, but what is that?

 

[jim.]

First off, ndiswrapper is a special project that uses windows wireless drivers to run in linux. It is a wrapper module to the linux kernel that makes the windows drivers work. Pretty cool stuff, and it works well with a lot of cards. I used it for a D-Link card that I had and it ran as fast or faster than in windows.

Second, portage is a package management technology. In gentoo there are heirarchical lists of *nix programs that you can install. Portage keeps track of the programs you have on your system and makes sure that you have all of the libraries required to run those programs and any new programs you want to install. This just scratches the surface of what portage can do. You can specify certain versions of programs that you don't want to be automatically upgraded, you can overlay your own ebuild files that will get only the certain program that you want. The list goes on and on. It is immensly powerful and I probably don't even know a fraction of what it can do.

I think portage has been ported to OSX. So you may be able to use it on your mac with nothing special except the compiler and other libs. I may actually try to go do that now.

Hope this helps.

Jim

 

[Rocksaurus]

Sheesh, that (portage) is pretty useful. Is gentoo the only one with it or will that come w/ any flavor of Linux (like Vector )?

 

[jim.]

Gentoo has it. Anything that is based on gentoo will have it (I think there are some distos based on gentoo, I just don't know them). FreeBSD has a similarly powerful ports system. You can get portage for OSX (Kind of like Fink, only it's portage).

Other package managers are pretty powerful too. apt for debian, and urpmi for mandrake have pretty powerful options if you look into them. Portage can be more up to date because of its source-based approach. Gentoo doesn't have to worry about making and testing binaries.

Edit: Vector is based on slackware, so doesn't have a default package manager, but you can use swaret (a third party manager), I'm sure.

Jim

 

[Phatpat]

On a related note, what's a good distro for those who want pure GUI. I've tried SUSE and Red Hat, but had to use the command line often and installing programs was an effort.

Is there anything "easy"?

 

[Rocksaurus]

Well, I'm no Linux expert, obviously, since I started this thread. If you haven't already checked out the website provided on the first page in someone's response, http://distrowatch.com/ is a very good site, it's got pretty good information on lots of different flavors of Linux and links to their respective websites. I remember awhile back "Lindows" came out as a Windows rip-off for people who didn't want too much Linux and were used to Windows... Of course, nobody said Windows was a particularly easy GUI either.

Naturally, I'm exaggerating. Again, I'm no Linux guru, but maybe check that out while you're on the website I gave you that some friendly poster on this topic gave me.

 

[~loserman~]

Why not try Darwin for x86.

If you want a bit more, there is always open BSD.

Max.

I would highly recommend against using darwin on x86.
It has very poor to almost non existent device driver support and its kernel is nowhere near as efficient as Linux.

You really cant go wrong with any of the standard linux distro's
While I personally prefer SUSE, Redhat/Fedora isnt bad either.
For a new user I would probably suggest Mandrake.

 

[~loserman~]

I think this is a common misconception amongst gentoo users. Compiling with gcc -O2 -mcpu=i586 -pipe on a server farm makes little to no speed difference with using gcc -O3 -mcpu=i586 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer on your own machine.

GCC isn't a miracle magic compiler that takes into account your chipset, cards, drive, etc. It just optimizes according to cpu instruction sets, which are standard. Now you might see a difference moving from -mcpu=i586 to -mcpu=athlon, but not much. Most of the optimizations come from that -O2 flag that everyone uses. Take a look at the gcc man page sometime, it's actually pretty neat.

In the case of a P2, a generic optimization to the i586 architechture is just as good no matter where it is compiled.

So in this case, no, gentoo is not worth the time and it will never be for these older chipsets. At most it might save you a nanosecond on some video computation. You'll get a bigger speed boost by getting a faster spinning hard drive. The best thing going for gentoo is its portage system, which is my favorite package manager by far. I loved it when I used gentoo.

Jim

A quality and accurate post

 

[jim.]

A review went up at madpenguin about Vector Linux. Might be worth a look.

http://madpenguin.org/cms/html/47/3641.html


Jim

 

[Rocksaurus]

Yeah, they've also got a review on Vector Linux 4.3, which is what I'll use since it comes with fluxbox and/or xfce instead of KDE, which from what I've read slows things down. I'm aware you can install new windowing systems, but I'm going to take this Linux thing a step at a time.

Review of 4.3:
http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=2784&page=1

 

[Westside guy]

Um, Ubuntu is completely the opposite of what you think it is. It's the absolute easiest linux of all. Do realize that it's basically Debian packaged up all pretty and easy. There is NO COMPILING INVOLVED in an Ubuntu install, whatsoever (unless you make your own kernel or installer or something, but that's obviously going to require compiling). I have Ubuntu installed here on the Powerbook because I was too lazy to go through with another gentoo install when I won't even be able to get airport drivers . Apt is the laziest thing ever, but it's good for new people.

Okay, I'll admit to being mistaken in thinking there was compiling in a default Ubunto install. Mea culpa. If it uses Debian's packaging system then it certainly can be easily altered to install everything from source - but since that's not the default (which I thought it was, based on some long droning threads on our university's sysadmin mailing list), then it really doesn't matter in the context of this discussion.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Playing around briefly in DSL I didn't really find a need for the command line but obviously as I use it more I guess I could run into a need? I think my final choice will be Vector Linux since it's got the lowest system requirements, and my dumpster system is well... low. Now if I could somehow find a free wireless card...

Actually, DSL runs on a 486 and can even decompress Ogg Vorbis streams fairly well. I've run it on a PIII 500 MHz and it is fine, as well as a PII for a short period of time, forgetting the speed....
Plus, if you want speed, and have more than 64 MB of RAM, start it up with the "dsl toram" option. It loads everything into RAM, thus making it fly!

 

[Rocksaurus]

Actually, DSL runs on a 486 and can even decompress Ogg Vorbis streams fairly well. I've run it on a PIII 500 MHz and it is fine, as well as a PII for a short period of time, forgetting the speed....
Plus, if you want speed, and have more than 64 MB of RAM, start it up with the "dsl toram" option. It loads everything into RAM, thus making it fly!

Yeah, DSL is good for old computers, but due to optimizations and lower overall requirements I chose Vector. Plus I've only got 64 MB RAM...


ANYWAY...

I installed vector with a few hassles, but hey, it's my first time so no worries... but uh...



I'm not sure what the problem is (though I have a guess) but I can't get the internet to work on this thing, which is stupid, because I got it to work through VPC, and it's not like it's hard to set up. I'm on DHCP, it should be cake. I'm worried that perhaps the ethernet port is broken/not working on my dumpster PC because, well, the lights next to it don't light up and I can't connect to the internet, and the light on my router doesn't turn on when the PC's plugged in. Any suggestions? Do I need to get Linux to recognize it or something? Help?