a lightweight, user friendly linux?

Hello, I'm hoping someone can give me some advice here.

My brother has an older PC that he just uses for the internet and email, that's it. I believe it's a pentium 2 333 with 256mb ram, but I don't remember exactly. It's old anyway, but it works. Currently he has windows 2000 installed on it, but it's having some annoying problems that probably aren't worth the time to troubleshoot. Since I don't have a win2k install disc, I thought maybe linux would be a good option.

Now, my brother isn't a computer expert by any means, but he knows what he's doing and doesn't have much trouble learning new things. Is there a linux distro suitable for this purpose? Something light on resources and straightforward to use, and a web browser that's actually going to run on that system (which may be faster than I stated, I don't recall).

Thanks!

 

I think your best choice will be Ubuntu [Kubuntu has some instability problems]

 

All linux systems can be configured to be lightweight and fast. It just depends on how much you want to learn in the process and how much time you're willing to put into it.

Now whilst (k)Ubuntu is an excellent distro to use if you are new to linux, or just don't have the patience to learn the ins and outs, it won't be the most lightweight. The reason for this is that, to be completely user-friendly they've had to include a lot of libraries and applications which can cover the broad spectrum of its users. It's like one-tool to fix everything kinda philosophy (which is in no way a bad thing if that is what you're looking for).

Now you can install Ubuntu, and take applications and libraries away when you discover you don't need them. This will teach you about linux and your system should be quite stable and fast. This is the top-down approach.

Personally I prefer the bottom-up approach. This involves building your system the the inside out. You would first compile your kernel, then choose the applications and libraries suitable for you. I've found that the system is much more stable by doing a bottom-up than a top-down.

My two favorite distros that use the bottom-up approach are Gentoo and Arch. Gentoo can be built on basically any system, because you have the option to compile the kernel for your particular architecture. The process is really quite involved, but if you understand what hardware you're running and are willing to read the excellent instruction documents - you will be fine.

The other distro which I like is Arch. It has an excellent package management system and is really quite fast. It's philosophy is one of KISS (keep it simple stupid) and is very easy to use if you can use a text editor (and again read the instructions). It's much easier to install and configure than Gentoo, but there are downsides. Gentoo has been around for much longer, and therefore has a much bigger packages database. Whilst Arch's is growing all the time, it is still considerably smaller. (Though if you're just going to install a browser Arch would be fine - it's the "special" packages that can prove to be a problem)

Have a look at Gentoo and Arch. They're the distros I would recommend.

 

I would recommend Ubuntu because it's one of the better distros for new users. I personally had NO linux experience whatsoever but quickly learned how to use it. Gentoo and Arch are good too, but installation is generally a bit longer because everything is pretty much compiled as you go.
Since the system appears to be quite an old system, I would recommend installing Xubuntu... a variant of Ubuntu that uses the Xfce interface - it is optimized to run efficiently on older hardware.

 

....Woof....

 

Zenwalk and Vector are both excellent, but they might cause some difficulty for a first time Linux user. The ncurses based installers can be intimidating, even though they're really just as simple as the graphical installers. There's also a bit more configuration to be done, especially with Vector.

I'd recommend avoiding Ubuntu where speed is concerned, but as far as user friendly distributions go it's really no worse than anything else. I'd say it's similar in speed to Windows 2000, maybe just a little bit slower.

 

It does???????????

I think KDE is better for older computers.

 

Kubuntu is a messed up distro; I've made countless threads detailing the problems with it. In any case, the starter of the thread should go to www.distrowatch.com if he/she wants to get the big picture about all the distros out there.

 

I second Zenwalk. (You could also have Beos working great on this unit, if the limited software for this old OS is sufficient for your needs. It is NOT Linux).

 

I second Xubuntu (its a ubuntu variant). Gentoo & Arch will take waaaaay too long to compile on that antique system.

 

I'd recommend Xubuntu or Arch. Both easy to install, though Arch will require a bit of reading.

 

Arch's package management is binary.

 

Debian. It gives you more control of the system and its package quality, quantity and management are the best.

Remember, Ubuntu, as many other systems, is based on Debian. Yes, ubuntu is more friendly but not as flexible and simplistic as Debian in my humble opinion.

Gentoo is great in teaching you the inner workings of the system and its documentation (wiki and forum) is the best. Debian has to catch up in this aspect. You can learn so much by using Gentoo.

Arch is worth trying. But is package system is not as solid and as large as Debian's.

Once you debian, you will always debian.

 

I don't know, I've used Debian and various Debian based distros in the past, but now I've gone with Arch. Once in awhile I wish I had some packages at my fingertips that Debian users do, but that's rare. What I really enjoy most is the speed (bootup and otherwise) and hands off approach to configuration of the package manager.

I disagree with your statement that pacman isn't as solid as apt/dpkg. It might not be as far reaching, for example not handling configuration beyond providing defaults, but I think that lack of complexity makes it more solid.