Lightweight Linux distro for older computer

[Jojo Yee]

What's your favorite lightweight Linux distro for older computer?

I have a standby old PC with a Celeron processor, 256 RAM and 20G harddisk space. 10G has been occupied by XP, another 10G is to dual boot with a lightweight Linux distro.

Tried Ubuntu, but it hanged during installation probably the RAM was marginally insufficient.

Tried Puppy, didn't quite like it.

There're many others, which do you think is the best to try out?

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/what...t-linux-distro
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Minimal_Linux_distros

[Jojo Yee]

Tried Ylmf, but it was running as slow as XP. Zorin was not suitable as it couldn't fit into a CD. The old PC didn't support booting from a USB stick.

Going to try Lubuntu. Downloading the iso now...

[Ritho]

I kind of like this one. http://peppermintos.com/ It is a very light weight Ubuntu derivative. I have gotten just about everything I wanted to run on it, and it starts very quickly.

[1002richards]

You could have a look at Crunchbang - I likde it, the 9.04 based version, not yet tried the Debian based version (Statler) but have downloaded it to try:

http://crunchbanglinux.org/

You could also look at Lubuntu:

http://lubuntu.net/

Hope these of interest?
Richard

[Jojo Yee]

CrunchBang 10 Statler is in the stage of Alpha2 right? Pappermint OS is a fork of Lubuntu, still not yet updated in this Wiki Chart or it must be quite new.

Lubuntu... completed 60% or 330 MB, in the process of downloading...

Downloading a distro takes quite a lot of time as each of them easily goes beyong a few hundred MBs.

[Anupam]

I also have an old system laying around having P-III and 256 MB SDRAM. I had thought of installing Linux on it. I had started a thread for suggestions too on this forum.

I had tried Xfce version of Linux Mint, since Xfce versions of distros are supposed to run light. I had installed it, and it ran OK. But, I felt it was quite slow. If I opened 2-4 tabs on Firefox, the response became sluggish.

Someone had suggested me Crunchbang Linux, but I never got around to try it out. It looks light though, so you may try it out.

I have now dropped the plan to run Linux on it, because I am learning .NET and so will have to let go of Linux. Also, I think for testing purpose, its OK to install Linux on such an old system, but for regular use... I don't know if it will work, as things run slow. If you can get 512 MB of RAM, then maybe things will get better.

You might run it as some kind of server though.

[Jojo Yee]

Booted up ok on Lubuntu 10.10 LiveCD, running ok, but it hanged during installation stage, even before asking for selection of partitions.

Next up... Peppermint-One at 450MB, started downloading and completed 10 per cent...

Wow, collected a few number of OS LiveCDs in different flavors now, just like collecting mp3 CDs.

Anupam, is CrunchBang really good? It says "CrunchBang Linux could possibly make your computer go CRUNCH! BANG!" in its about page. I might give it a spin later.

[kendall.a]

I'm curious what you end up with. My old XP laptop has about 896 RAM. As I indicated in another forum, I booted up the LiveDVD of Zorin but I couldn't get it to connect to the internet via wireless. (I have this button for turning on the wireless. When I turned it on, the OS popped up with a message to install drivers. But, when I tried, the drivers couldn't be found.)

So, if you find one that seems to easily connect wirelessly, I'd love to know.

[Anupam]

Originally Posted by Jojoyee

Anupam, is CrunchBang really good?

I don't know. As I wrote in my post earlier, I had downloaded the ISO and burnt a CD too, but I never got around to install it on the system. You will have to try it out for yourself.

[MidnightCowboy]

Sorry guys but you're all barking up the wrong tree

330mb, looks great, what more could you ask?

http://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=186