Can someone please tell me witch linux distribution is best for a starter, I want to run it on my old pentium, 16MB ram.
Thanks

On such an old system, I would recommend a small distro, such as vector linux, which I use personally. You should probably try to get an idea of what you are doing before you try linux though, unless your system is fast enough to run one of the bigger distros well, like mandrake.

i agree. vector is decent as is dragoon linux for win 32. dragoon may be better for you since it avoids partitioning

With a swap partition if he sets it to a certain size he can double his ram, no?
Nice whole 32meg of Ram *drools*

wouldn�t that decrease the speed in an exponential way?

Thanks guys!

BSK, I actually didn't notice any speed change on my computer(p133 megabitch processor, 32megs of Ram, and a 7gig HDD)...If you want the swap to take up more space, your ram increases...


And if it does I really couldn't tell the difference anyways....

[This message has been edited by t0ne (edited 07-02-2002).]

I didn't feel like editing again...

UH, what kind've windows manager does dragoon and vector? I bought a nice little computer today (much like mike's) and was gonna turn it into a leet h4x0rz machine. heh.

quote:

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Originally posted by t0ne:
If you want the swap to take up more space, your ram increases...

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Thing is, RAM is used because it is thousands of times faster to access than the harddisk. If you increase the swap space, you may have more 'RAM' avalable, but it will be much much slower as insted of using real RAM it will be reading and writing to the harddisk.

Try OpenBSD..its good for old/small systems, its unix based though, not Linux..can be tougher, if your brace try Immunix or Mininix or whatever the hell its called, its for SUPER old systems...

slackware.

i think obsd and slack are a little advanced for a new user. if i had to pick i would say dragoon, vector, or slack

i'm constantly hearing that slackware is too advanced, it seems to me to be as simple as any other distro.

The install is a simple menu based system, everything is explained. The package install system is simple and easy to use. Almost every file is internally commented as so to enable ven the most new user able to edit them. It even uses BSD style init scripts because they are much simpler to follow.

What makes slackware harder than most of the others?

requires more hand editing of config files to get up and running. Also, it seems a little tricker to get X up and running.

If you delve into it, it's just more there to futz around with, which also means that if you don't know what your doing and you go around trying to set things up, theres absolutely no help, and you'll probably end up severly fucking something up...

in all honesty i dont think any of the striped down mini distros are good for a new user unless they are unusualy gifted in computers or have a nack for linux. i would just recomend mandrake for linux users of any level. its "bloated" but you have the option as to what individual packages you wish to install. in reality mandrake can be a slim mini distro if you set it up manually.

if it doesnt have to be true linux then use QNX. i just installed it and its great. incredibly easy to install and its graphics are far better than xf86. less problems than a standard xf86 server and its fast even on a pentium 200 mhz 64 megs. best of all its fits in a miniscule hard drive. i looking for this to be the next alternate platform in computing. small, fully graphical, and problem free. the only issue i have is that it didnt detect my network card but i dont mind since it was built into the mother board.

QNX is for embeded systems syphon... its going the direction of Windows CE. Not really a PC OS.

download this mother and install it, then tell me its no good for pc! its more than suitable for a pc as well as embeded. it appears that qnx is not going to be free but even so it will better than paying for windows if it catches on.