A good distro for a legacy machine?

[Devillion]

Alright, so after 8 (hell yea) years of Win98 on my 1996 IBM Aptiva E2U (speed? power? wuzzat?), im going to move to linux.

This is not my first linux experience, so dont toss n00b distros out. However, all of my other linux experiences have been laptop based, and based on their wardriving ability. (i dont use desktops really, hence why i have not upgraded ;P)

This aptiva has like 300 mhz, AMD k6/3DNOW/MMX. It has 256mb ram. Video card is a nonexistant onboard ATI rage card.

What would be a good distro that is very lightweight for my system? It only need basic webbrowsing/video/music/cd burning capabilites, nothing over-the-top. Should i consider something like FreeBSD?

Also, does the MMX/3DNOW processor matter at all? Will that affect what kernels i can use?

I have had experience with Debian/Libranet/Knoppix/Warlinux.

[WMD]

With that RAM, you could run almost anything on that.

However, I'll to my recommendation of Slackware.  Also, since you've used Debian, you can use that too.

As for kernels, Slack (and probably Debian) ship with kernels compiled for 386/486.  Both are friendly to new kernels, so you could compile one with K6 optimizations (which I assume would be 3DNow).

[Orethrius]

I would be remiss not to mention VectorLinux, which is based on the Slackware kernel - you could probably squeeze a teensy bit more performance out of your machine with that.

 :cool:

[WMD]

Vector is compiled for i686.  I don't remember the K6 being an i686 chip.

[Orethrius]

WMD, I love ya, but you're nuts.
Base Requirements (given he might have to compile it himself on less than a 686 architecture).

[WMD]

Hmm, this is interesting:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/vectorlinux/veclinux-4.0/packages/

Apparently it's a whole mix of i386, i486, and i586 packages.  Someone was drinking too much coffee.

[mobrien_12]

If I remember correctly, the K6 worked best with software optimized for either the K6 (Duh    ) or i486.

[ January 07, 2005: Message edited by: M. O'Brien ]

[Calum]

i'd still suggest slackware.

versions up to and including 9.1 compiled for i386, and version 10.0 (and above when it comes to it) compiled for i486 in case yr interested.

[Refalm]

Yes Slackware. It may be hard at first, but once you installed it, it's like a rocket ship compared to Windows which is more like a Lada in comparison.

[choasforages]

netbsd, runs great on everything including your toaster. im currently working on getting netbsd functuanal with a dreamcast.

[mmadia]

even though this is in the unix+gnu/linux section,  might i suggest BeOS?  

BeOS Max Edition v3.1b1 , which is a repackaged  
BeOS R5 Personal Edition

I suggest Max over original PE, as many updated drivers and 3rd party apps are included.

web browsing: Mozilla or FFox
email: Mail Daemon Replacement 3.x (aka MDR)
cd burning: Helios
video: VLC
music: SoundPlay or CL-AMP,  both of which support WinAmp style skins if that's your thing.

BeOS will *fly* on that hardware.

I've replied to two other posts w/more info. about BeOS in the
Not Quite Mainstream OSs

[solemnwarning]

ive been looking for a distro that will install on this piece of shit no luck so far:

Intel 486RX2 running @ 66Mhz
524Meg Hot-Swap SCSI Drive
Floppy Drive
No cd (IDE controller cant take a cd    )
16Meg SIMM RAM
ISA Lan Card (3Com Etherlink III ISA (3C509/3C509b)
ISA SCSI Card

Names Of SCSI Drive And Dock:
Drive: MountainGate PassPort XL
Dock: Quantum PassPort XL
SCSI: Future Domain TMC-1650/1660/1670/1680 SCSI Host Adaptor

[Master of Reality]

you're all nucking futs.... go with OpenBSD

[Master of Reality]

you're all nucking futs.... go with OpenBSD

you sir are an ass.... use NetBSD it has a whole bunch of packages and such for it, although i never got it to work on a computer

Although neither of those are really linii, so if your determined for a Linux i would go with Slackware. The newest version of slack doesnt have support for i386, so you would have to find slack9.0 i think, but that shouldnt be too hard.

[Aloone_Jonez]

This seems to be a sticking point for Linux.

You might be able to run slack on a 586 with 16MB. but if you're a newb and you want to experiment with Linux on an old machine or you just don't want to go buy a new one this can be a problem. Most people I know who aren't computer people (unlike most people here) have fairly old computers, most of my friends have 32 to 256MB of RAM - that's nowhere near enough for the newb bloatware distros like Mandrake and Fedora, even Windows in my experience runs at a similar (or dare I say it faster) pace than these distros.

Fortunately I discovered Vector Linux and even though there are some things I don't like about it (like lack of easy customisation) it's a good newb distro - hopefully it will improve with age without going the same way as th others.

How about BeOS?

I've heard it's very graphical, but what are the minimum requirements?