J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I have an old 95 machine which I have cocked up messing about and really cant be bothered re-installing 95 (or 98 for that matter) and it wont run XP cos its so ancient, its a 233 MMX with 64 megs of ram and a hard disk of some description, dont want to bin it so was wondering whether its worth putting Linux on it, my main pc has a 4 port ADSL router so I would like to just run a web browser on it for when the kids are monopolising the main machine.

I know a bit of Unix and work in IT but havent had any dealings with Linux but like the ethos and hope to end up with something more reliable than 95 on it, which distribution should I go for ?

Whats it like to set up ?

Any advice gratefully received.

stevencotton

Any distribution will do really, just ensure nothing's running you don't need in order to save ram. You'll want to run X but don't install a CPU-sucking desktop environment like gnome or KDE, stick with a lightweight window manager like WindowMaker and use Opera and it will fly.

vmax

Linux is pretty light on hardware compared to Windows. However even for surfing you would benefit with from an upgrade of RAm to at least 128mb.

Once you have installed linux, A nice light window manager which i like is flux box http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/

Get a copy of Firebird Browser, It does not contain any bloat such as an email client, HTML editor and the rest of it.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/why/

Chris L

I've just put a copy of Redhat 9 onto an old PC of mine - 433Mhz Celeron with 256 Meg RAM. It ran like a dog under Windows, but the performance is way better on Linux, even running Gnome and a few other bits. I want to strip it down a bit and take off some of the extra software. Your PC should be fine.

Thanks for the tip about Windowmaker Steve - I'll try this!

I can recommend Firebird aswell - very good browser (under Windows and Linux).

Chris

Gedi

I'll recommend Blackbox.
I run this on my home firewall / IDS (its is nice to look at something other than a full screen shell, even if your never gonna use it for anything). This runs on a 133 and is probably still quicker than a windows system on >1Ghz.

Themes
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http://hurring.com/screenshots/blackbox
http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/920/?topic_id=920

btw, sorry chris, I just remembered that mail I was meant to be sending when I saw your post then. It'll be in yer inbox later on tonight.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Cheers for the info, will have a go and report back !

Chris L

No problem Gedi - I know you are busy, so I wasn't going to chase you up (yet )

Chris