Linux For A Verrrrrrry Old Computer

My younger Brother Has to use a verry old computer. Just can't afford a new computer right now. It is unfortunate cause he kinda wants to be a computer science major(he is only 14 so that could change)anyway I was wondering if there was any linux distribution that was very light. His computer has a Pentium 200ghz proc, 64-128 mbs of ram, not sure how much really, and probably has a integraited GPU. I thought a Linux opperating system would be kinda fun for him to play around with. any recomendations.

 

Yeah. Look into Slackware. That'd probably be great for him.

And the OS is called LINUX.

 

Slack seems a good choice. Pair it with the Xfce desktop and it should go alright. I ran Ubuntu Breezy on a P1 200MHz, 128MB ram and 2MB Rage thingo, and with Xfce, it ran acceptably.

 

how is xubuntu? you think it would run on his laptop

 

Oh boy, just looked at his laptop and it has 72mbs of ram and a Pentium 150mgz. also when I go to the website there are like six things to download. am I suposed to dowload just one or all of the things.

 

Xubuntu will run fine on that setup. You just cant install with a live CD because there isnt enough RAM for a live CD+Install. You have to use the alternate CD.

If you just want to download it (The Alt CD) straight, use the following link

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/6.10/release/xubuntu-6.10-alternate-i386.iso

If you want to use Bittorrent to download it, use this link

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/6.10/release/xubuntu-6.10-alternate-i386.iso.torrent

 

Well I downloaded the x83 Xubuntu and burned it to a CD but for some reason my brothers computer would not even recognize that the CD drive was present. for some reason the disc won't boot from my computer either. I went and ordered some live CDs from ubuntu's website so we will see if that works. any sugestions on what went wrong?

 

It might be that the CDs that you burned aren't very high quality and as you mentioned, the laptop is very old, so it might not be able to read these new CDs. I sometimes run into this issue where one of my drives isn't able to read CDs or DVDs while other drives (I have several computers) can read them without a problem.

 

They may have been the torrent file themselves. Its a little package that track the pieces if the item being downloaded. You'd need to open it up using a bittorrent client. I dont use bittorrent, but Ive heard uTorrrent os good because you dont hace to install it.

 

If I try downloading I will probably try that. I ended up downloading the 654MB file, took about an hour to download but still would not boot. I guess I will have to wait for the live CDs I ordered and see how they work.

 

My apologies if this question is insulting in anyway, just trying to help, you knwo how to burn .iso files right? What program are you using?

 

Not insulting at all. truth is I have never burnt a CD before the one for linux. I am using nero and burning the file as a image(this was recomended by several sites) to be honest I don't even know what a .iso file is. am I doing anything blatenly wrong? probably am LOL, just don't know it.

 

Try DSL (**** Small Linux). It's only 50MB and they have a new version thats only 90MB. It was made for low resources.

I don't know how it handles drivers, or braodband. I haven't play with it in years.

Give it a try.


I would have recommended Ubuntu, but I don't know if the old laptop is good enough or not .

Give it try too.

 

I have ubuntu coming in the mail so I probably will give it a try, atleast in live cd form.

 

I'm currently trying to resurrect my very first computer from the dead. It's a 1GHz Celeron, with 256MB of ram and a choice of 16MB Riva 128 or 128MB Radeon 9200SE GPU. At the moment, the screen won't turn on. It recognises when it's plugged, but won't display an image.

 

That's better than the old fossil I was running back in the day.
Desktop
Celeron @ 450MHz
128MB RAM (actual 96)
10GB HDD
32MB Rage Pro video card
Windows ME

Laptop
486 CPU @ 66MHz
64MB RAM
2GB HDD
2MB video card (cyrix???)

 

Yeah, I got into the game so much later than everyone else.

 

Blah! My first PC ran a 286

I dont know why it shouldnt work. You could try something little and freeware like CDBurnerXP Pro3, its what I use and hasnt failed a burn yet.

 

Old bios' won't boot Cd's, we have several older toshibas, and one of them can't boot a CD....
Slackware however has a boot floppy to get around this problem

BTW.... I'm typing this on a compaq with a 266 Pent. MMX, 128Mb ram, 4GB HD, and an Atheros external PCMCIA WFI card. and loaded with Slackware.(using XFCE)
Linux runs beautifully, a little slower than my Athlon64 Desktop, but can you blame it?

 

I had an old AMD K6 300 setup with linux, using it as a Samba server up until a month or so ago. I also had apache installed so I could test some of my php stuff. It ran wonderfully for what I needed it to do.

 

Good old Cyrix CPUs...

 

How do I get the program to a floppy disk? it is not connected to the internet. how many floppy's do you need?

 

Don't know if Puppy Linux was already mentioned here.

It would work with the old hardware, and interaction with its devoted enthusiasts forum would be a good background for a future computer scientist.

DIY is where the things start when you are 14.

 

How do you suggest I get the puppy linux to the floppy disk

 

Hey refinedPower
If you are still going the (x)ubuntu way, then please have a read of this:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SmartBootManagerHowto

It is instructions for installing ubuntu onto systems that don't support booting from the cd rom drive.

Hope it helps
Michael

 

hey thanks!! I'll give it a try.