Linux

Hey, I'm thinking of setting up Linux on a spare computer I have laying around. It is an fairly old machine. Does anyone know a good distribution that will run WELL on a system that has 96 megs of RAM and a 19GB hard drive and, I believe a pentium 3 chip.

I'll probably use it as a server for RADIUS authentication on my wireless network, large file backups (so, the smaller the distro, the better), maybe a little web hosting, and possibly a wireless stereo via VNC or Telnet at some point in the distant future.

If you can give me a distro that will handle all that proficiently at 96megs of RAM, I'll love you forever.

 

Smallest distro that I can think of is Slackware.

 

The smallest I know of is Damn Small Linux (DSL)

Puppy is also small and full featured.

Goto www.distrowatch.com for a list of popular distros.

PK

 

I used to be a Slackware aficionado. It still ranks up there, however, the friendliest distro that I've ever seen is the UBUNTU Live CD ( version 6.06). It can be run entirely from the CD, or you may also install it. The ISO image fits on a single 700MB ( 80 minute) CD and includes the openOffice suite, DVD and CD authoring packages, GIMP graphics packages and FireFox for browsing. Since 80% of most Linux distributions are never used, you'll be amazed at how much is packed on this sweetheart. It also supports AMD64 bit as well as Intel. The driver base is just short of phenomenal, so getting stuff to work is very easy. In spite of the name, UBUNTU is not from Africa - it's from Europe - specifically the Isle of Man.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download

 

Thank you all.

I would love to use Ubuntu. I have some experience with it, and I think it's great. But will it run efficiently on 96megs?

 

I can't say for sure. All graphical operating systems are hungry for ram, in one form or another. The thing about Linux is that it has superb memory management, via an independant <swap> partition. If you download it and try it, maybe you can post back your results and help dozens of readers. I know I'll be waiting to hear!