Which distro would be best?

[Devillion]

Sorry if this is not the forum my thread should be in. If this is the case, feel free to move it.

I've got an old IBM Aptiva, from 1997. It's really outdated, and cannot run windows XP.

I was wondering if instead of using windows on this machine, if i could run linux. The person who would use the machine, would need it only for word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows, and email. No games, no photo editing, nothing extravagant.

The machine has only a 6gb HardDisk, and a painfully slow 'AMD K6 2/333' processor. The machine has 256 mb of ram.

What would be a good linux distro for such an old computer?

EDIT-The only hardware the distro would need to handle is, a CDburner, and a USB printer/scanner/copier (all-in-one).

Thanks for your help. ;

[WMD]

In the Linux world, a 333Mhz/256MB system isn't "old" by any means.  You should be able to run a full distro like Mandrake or SuSE just fine on that. (Especially with the large RAM for such an aged machine)

"Old" is more like a Pentium 166Mhz, 32MB RAM, and such.  I have that and run Slackware on it (however it's not for newbies by any means).

[worker201]

My Slacktop has a k6 300, 128MB RAM and a 4GB hard drive, and I can do anything any other Linux user can.  Slackware 9.1 is a very nice distro, but be prepared to learn a lot very quickly, because it isn't as friendly as other distros.  Slackware knows that Linux power in in the terminal, while graphical distros know the friendliness is in the windows.

Fedora is nice, no matter what retsin says about it.  Suse is cool too.  Haven't used any others.  I suggest downloading Fedora, because there are ten million pages of help out there for RedHat 9, all of which applies to Fedora.  Cost: 3 blank cds and time to download and burn.

On the other hand, a beginner might be well served by going to BestBuy and buying a boxed set for $40.  You get all the cds, plus a manual.  Suse 8.2 came with a sticker too.      

Edit: IDE optical drives and USB hardware should be fully supported by kernel 2.4.22 or later, without rebuilds or modules.

[ February 27, 2004: Message edited by: worker201 ]

[ February 27, 2004: Message edited by: worker201 ]

[Devillion]

Cool, thanks guys. So look at fedora, mandrake, and suse.

Do they all use the KDE desktop enviorment? That is what i use on my distro, and is what i would most easily be able to teach the user.

And i heard someone say the fedora cannot play mp3's or read FAT and NTFS disks? Is this true?

[worker201]

quote:Originally posted by Devillion:
Cool, thanks guys. So look at fedora, mandrake, and suse.

Do they all use the KDE desktop enviorment? That is what i use on my distro, and is what i would most easily be able to teach the user.

And i heard someone say the fedora cannot play mp3's or read FAT and NTFS disks? Is this true?

that's restin256 - he is obviously smoking a whole bunch of crack.  I have not had any trouble with mounting win drives, or viewing/hearing any media.  I guess he is rebuilding his kernel to 2.6 or something, and isn't doing so well.  Trust me, Fedora is cool.

KDE is included in Fedora and Suse and Slackware, i can't vouch for any other distros.

[Refalm]

quote:Devillion: Cool, thanks guys. So look at fedora, mandrake, and suse.

Do they all use the KDE desktop enviorment? That is what i use on my distro, and is what i would most easily be able to teach the user.

And i heard someone say the fedora cannot play mp3's or read FAT and NTFS disks? Is this true?

I never tried Fedora, but I know it needs a mp3 plugin from XMMS.org.

Mandrake is probably the best for your friend. It's easy, it reads FAT32 partitions, plays mp3's, have many drivers and comes standard with OpenOffice.org, which can read, write and save Word, Excel and Powerpoint files (highly compatible with Office XP).

[Commander]

tried RedHat and SuSE.. but i must say, imo suse is the better one.  it's fast and reads ntfs and fat32 partitions without having to do anything.  yast(SuSE control panel) is the coolest thing, redhat didnt have something anywhere close to that (not sure if Fedora does).

didnt try Mandrake yet.  but with suse installed, nothing is pushing to try any other distro... not yet

[hm_murdock]

quote:and cannot run windows

yes, it can. I ran XP Pro on a 300 with 512MB and it was gravy.

the trick is having a good vid card. if you've got that, then you're good to go.

[restin256]

quote:Originally posted by worker201:
that's restin256 - he is obviously smoking a whole bunch of crack.  I have not had any trouble with mounting win drives, or viewing/hearing any media.  I guess he is rebuilding his kernel to 2.6 or something, and isn't doing so well.  Trust me, Fedora is cool.

Not in my opinion. Sound still wouldn't work after I recompiled the kernel, the gay drivers. I would try new methoods of mounting the drives, but I already uninstalled Fedora for SuSE 9 Pro. That's a good OS for starters.

And if you're not completely illiterate, and want to learn a lot about Linux, try Gentoo.

And Commander, RedHat sucks. Fedora is just another excuse of it, I see/saw absolutely nothing different, other than it installed - and uninstalled - faster than RH9.

I tried MDK 8 on a P2 with 160MB of RAM, and it ran pretty well.

[preacher]

If you want the fastest speed in your older(though not old by linux standards) equipment, try using Slackware. Slack has always been the fastest performer for me on my slow ass 200mhz/64mb RAM pc.

[restin256]

Unless you're into compiling things yourself, then get Gentoo.

[preacher]

Hey Slack has apt now.

[Master of Reality]

included in the distro?.... slapt-get and swaret have been around for a while to dl slack packages.

[solo]

Actually if Fedora is like RH 9 (i never got Fedora actually running it was so shitty), NTFS disks can only be read by root. This reallllly makes it hard to make a good use out of it.

This is my first post here in a LONG time