Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : Linux Distro for my old laptop!

[Xshare]

Here's the kicker, the laptop is a Pentium 166, with 64MB Memory, 2 GB harddrive.

I'm currently running some old slackware derivative, and it's really not suiting my purposes as its not being updated anymore, theres hardly any support for it, and it doesnt work with anything.

I need a good linux distro that I can put on my laptop, and it needs to be able to (hopefully natively, but if not, than without crazy modding)

• run fluxbox
• play MP3s (maybe) (it'll be tough to get it to work with my soundcard, but I can tinker around with it in the command line, I've done it before)
• wirelessly connect using a PCMCIA card (if possible)
• run gAIM
• run an email client, lynx (the basics)
• not kill my laptop (super important)

I'm currently leaning heavily towards debian, being that it seems very configurable, and I can probably get it to work well on my laptop.

If anyone has better ideas, please let me know.



DISTROS NOT TO SUGGEST (for various reasons)

• Knoppix
• DSL(DamnSmallLinux)
• Mandrake
• Mandrake(obviously)
• Vector Linux

[Dan L]

Debian is nice but you'll need to find the drivers yourself. RedHat installed by default on my box, while Debian needed this-and-that-driver.

[Xshare]

Originally posted by DanX
Debian is nice but you'll need to find the drivers yourself. RedHat installed by default on my box, while Debian needed this-and-that-driver.

Yea that's something I was thinking of too. I don't think RedHat (Fedora, rather) would work on my laptop thouhg, would it? Is RedHat very configurable during the install so that I can basically tell it not to install almost anything, including KDE, gnome, etc., and will I actually have any room left on my HDD after installing it?

[westcan]

I like debian. It can be as big or small as yout want.

never had any driver problems either

[Xshare]

Originally posted by westcan
I like debian. It can be as big or small as yout want.

never had any driver problems either

Alright, so do you think the best course for installation is to download the minimal CD and do the network download? Or should I get the full thing on an ISO and install? I'm leaning towards minimal CD.

[westcan]

Originally posted by Xshare
Alright, so do you think the best course for installation is to download the minimal CD and do the network download? Or should I get the full thing on an ISO and install? I'm leaning towards minimal CD.

I prefer the netinst

[SniperDevil]

Debian Sarge.

[sasha]

I always recommand slackware for older systems. Install is simple and customizable and it is compiled for i386.

[Xshare]

Originally posted by sasha
I always recommand slackware for older systems. Install is simple and customizable and it is compiled for i386.

Hmm, the fact that it comes on 4 CDs kinda scares me though, for this old of a system.

also: for debian, sarge or woody? I'm going with sarge currently (14% downloaded for the netinst.iso), but is there a reason to stick with woody?

[Promethyl]

I'm big on the Redhat "Fedora" distros... 7.3, 8, 9, and Core 1/2.

[Blankwire]

I've heard good things about gentoo..

[Burhan]

Gentoo is great for this sort of stuff. I set it up on this old 160 Mhz, 96 Meg RAM, 20 gig HDD Dell box to play around with Apache/PHP. I even had Fluxbox and Mozilla going on it!

Gentoo is extermely configurable (since its a source based distro) and is very easy to maintain. Plus, like with other source based distros, you won't get all the extra cruft like you would with say RH. Give it a try.

I can recommend some applications for you :

mp3blaster (command line mp3 player)
links2 (has javascript and primitive table support, and can be compiled to have image support (with framebuffer))
mutt (probably one of the top 5 command line email clients. With procmail+fetchmail can be a very powerful tool)
centericq (ICQ/Yahoo!/AIM/IRC/MSN/Jabber ncurses based client)

Good luck with your distro hunt Good place to search for isos is linuxiso.org

[edge100x]

I love Gentoo and I'd recommend it too, although you may have some difficulty with the 2G hard drive. Portage is a little on the chunky side.

Make sure to compile your own kernel to get all the drivers you need.

[rghf]

Originally posted by fyrestrtr
Gentoo is great for this sort of stuff. I set it up on this old 160 Mhz, 96 Meg RAM, 20 gig HDD Dell box to play around with Apache/PHP. I even had Fluxbox and Mozilla going on it!

How long did it take to compile? 2 weeks?

Rus

[edge100x]

That's another good point. I wouldn't particularly recommend a stage 1 if you do choose Gentoo. Stage 3 would be best to start, since it'd put you instantly online. You can always recompile everything later if you don't need to use it for a few days.