[nylug-talk] Distro Recommendation... for an old, cruddy machine.

[Chris Knadle]

On Sunday 06 January 2008, oscar zero wrote:
> What Distro would you savvy Linux Shills drop on a sub-1-GHz, 256MB,
> 120gig HD?

   I think any of them would run fine.

   I gave my father a Desktop running Debian Sarge with KDE about three years 
ago from essentially junked parts -- PIII 500 MHz with 256MB of PC100 RAM, 
and an 8 GB hard disk.  Two years later the only problem he had with the 
machine [which now obviously runs Etch] was that he had gotten used to 
opening many Firefox windows at once along with other applications, and 
eventually the box would go to swap.  The only thing he really needed was a 
memory upgrade, so we installed as much RAM into the box as would fit (1GB) 
and I upgraded the hard disk from 8GB to 120GB only to get a newer drive that 
was more quiet.  [Note: we had to do the memory upgrade twice; first time we 
got the wrong RAM and only half of each stick was recognized.]

   So my advice is the essentially same as Sunny's; if you can, upgrade the 
RAM to however much the box will take [and try to get the right RAM type].  
If you want 3D I'd recommend getting a cheap Nvidia card, but that's mostly 
optional unless you consider Google Earth, the fancier screensavers, or 3D 
games to be a need.

   I generally don't bother doing custom kernel compiles for other people's 
desktops unless I need to for hardware support; however like Sunny I agree 
that there are definitely advantages to doing so, and it's what I do for all 
of my own boxes.  I.E. definitely fun and has many advantages, but that's 
also optional.

   My condolances to 'ol Betsy 6.93; drowning is a terrible way to go.

   Cheers.
   -- Chris

-- 

Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle at coredump.us