*nix for a dinosour

[psycho_8b]

So I have acquired a machine...A rather old machine...Fixed it for a friend over a year ago but he never came to pick it up and have lost contact with him...YOINK!
I want to run a Linux distro on it to learn about how Linux works and stuff.

Only thing is this machine is an old fuck...Pentium 3 1Ghz, 256 RAM, 10GB hard drive and a CD ROM drive (no large distros on DVDs here!)
I have run Ubuntu on it but that's a little laggy...Tried a liveCd version of OpenSUSE this morning and fucking Hell that was painful!

Any suggestions for which distro would run well enough on an old bastard like this one?

You could try Xubuntu. It uses XFCE instead of Gnome. Or something like Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux would be a better choice.

Originally Posted by psycho_8b

I want to run a Linux distro on it to learn about how Linux works and stuff.

First off pal, it's GNU/Linux!..Get use to it, sunshine.

Only thing is this machine is an old fuck...Pentium 3 1Ghz, 256 RAM, 10GB hard drive and a CD ROM drive (no large distros on DVDs here!)

Well obviously you shouldn't be running something like ubuntu or opensuse on a system like that. But still, the system is fine for other distributions for a learning experience.

I recommend what c0rrupt recommended. You should try a distro like Damn Small Linux. That should run fine on such a system with those specifications.

You have made an excellent choice coming over to the free world, but be careful we have a few traitors around here. *cough* Mod *cough*

Originally Posted by villageillness

Well obviously you shouldn't be running something like ubuntu or opensuse on a system like that.

You could get OpenSUSE to work very easily, the live cd you tried is either KDE or GNOME. KDE is bloated and GTK+ is the slowest toolkit out there.

You could install OpenSUSE and install one of the light desktop. (Xfce LXDE and E16 are the friendliest still alive).

You could go with xubuntu or zenwalk, but don't expect to learn much from them.

Gentoo, Arch Linux and Slackware is the way to go if your a newbie and want to learn. (There's others but their more **programmer**)
Those three will all run perfectly on a P3, as long as you don't use KDE and GNOME. (like most distro, really)

the specs are ok.
i've managed to get Ubuntu working at a fast enough speed on a computer exactly like that. i just replaced gnome with LXDE and disabled all the daemons i didnt need

but puppy linux is what i would choose for a light distro

[deus-redux]

It'd be a good candidate for one of the BSDs (eg. FreeBSD), too. Linux is more practical to use, but if it's just for learning, and you want to learn the ins and outs of a *nix OS, a BSD is a good choice.

Slackware etc. would also be good for going down that route.

-deus-

[psycho_8b]

Originally Posted by villageillness

First off pal, it's GNU/Linux!..Get used (fixed) to it, sunshine.

Thanks for the wisdom, oh great one. I'll try to keep my licensing protocols correct when you're around.

Well obviously you shouldn't be running something like ubuntu or opensuse on a system like that. But still, the system is fine for other distributions for a learning experience.

Obviously. :|
That's why I came here...To state the obvious.
Did you see the keyword "learning" up there mate?
I am glad to hear it's fine for other distributions however the sarcasm and "I know what the fuck I'm talking about and you don't!" stuff is pretty geeky buddy boy. You wanna help a newbie trying to learn something or auto-fellate?

Originally Posted by zeusy

You could install OpenSUSE and install one of the light desktop. (Xfce LXDE and E16 are the friendliest still alive).

Woah man...One thing at a time here eh?!
I need the distro first...You can help me when it comes to installing a new GUI! Speaking of GUIs I'm guessing KDE is out of the question...Damn...I liked the way that looked. Used it on MEPIS on my laptop but didn't get down to learning much...Long story.

Originally Posted by fined_mind

but puppy linux is what i would choose for a light distro

Puppy sounds good...I tried it a couple years back on a pen drive and liked it...Very light but does the job...Just lost the pen drive though. Forgot all about it. Or DSL sounds good as c0rrupt suggested.

Deus...I tried installing freeBSD a couple years back and I have to say...I got absolutely nowhere near installing it...Total fucking n00b!

Thanks for the suggestions and guidance guys...It is really appreciated.

Go *BSD or Debian those will probably be your best bets

[Prometheum]

The LiveCD won't be an accurate performance indicator, as it'll be slow going through RAM.

Gentoo typically is able to run pretty light, but installing applications will take a while. I'd recommend using Gentoo if you know exactly everything you want to do on the box. Install what you need in the first week, emerge --sync && emerge -auDN world every other week (late late at night in a cron job; that will not let you use the machine).

I've heard good things about Arch, but really any distro will be fine as long as it has a modern kernel and a good package manager. Don't use anything like Puppy Gnu/Linux, DSGL, or anything like that. Those are optimized for size, not actual 'lightness'.

The real bottleneck will probably be at the video layer and in expensive high-level language runtimes like Java or Ruby. Stay away from those two, use a good video card (it doesn't need 3d anything, it just needs to be a driver that will push work to the card instead of the CPU, nv will work, as will any other driver, just don't use vesa), and use a lightweight desktop environment. OpenBox, FluxBox, XFCE, and E17 are good (fuck e16, e17 is amazing), avoid GNOME and KDE like the god-dammed plague. If you're using Gentoo, you can put "-gnome -kde -glib -qt" in your USE flags to stay away from needing that stuff and to make emerging apps faster.

To sum up, use Gentoo, check out the Gentoo wiki for tips on how to keep your system nice and optimized, master the art of USE flags.

[Snoopy]

A gigahertz machine old as fuck?