recommendations for a starter Linux distribution?

If you want to take on building your own lightweight system there’s a good article here: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lwl1/?t=gr,lnxw04=LLP1

Unfortunately it seems to require an existing Linux system to compile stuff on, so this may not work for you unless you have access to someone elses system. I’ve been trying to figure a way around this myself, because I’ve got an old Pentium 90 I’d like to set up, but there’s no way it’ll run a standard distribution. If anyone has any suggestions on how to bootstrap enough to build the rest I’d love to hear it! (and in my case, I’m an old hand at Unix, just not at Linux.)

      • [continued from earlier post]…or maybe not. I went to the Redhat download mirrors page and tried about 25 different mirrors, and all were busy. So perhaps I will go it with the old Mandrake 7.2, just because I’ve already got the CD’s on hand and it includes a bootmanager (I dunno where else to get one…) and I wanna start on this in the next few days. I can wipe Mandrake later if I want, I suppose…
        ???
        By the way, how come Windows installs off one CD, and Linux distros all seem to take at least 3 CD’s? The retail Mandrake I got has four, but IIRC the 4th one is just extra apps…
        ~

Because commercial Linux distros (esp. Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE) tend to include a lot of packaged software - multiple email clients, multiple window managers, multiple Word Processing packages, etc. SuSE, in particular, produces a version of their distro that comes on 8 CDS. Also, Linux distributions generally have to include the source code for a lot of the software they include (anything licensed under the GNU GPL or similar licenses), and usually include source even for things they aren’t required to. Plus, Unix in general assumes the presence of development tools that as development tools that Windows users don’t tend to have included with them - GCC alone, plus required source files, takes up a big chunk of space, and that’s without make, autoconf, or the like. Now multiply that times Perl, Python, Tcl, and whatever else, and it’s a big chunk o’ stuff.

Usually no matter how much memory you have in your machine, it will almost all be used

On this machine with 880MB ram - 60MB is free.

The memory that is not used for applications, will be used as disk buffers and cache.

However something like gnome will use alot of memory - if you want light, just run a window manager like blackbox or icewm instead of a desktop environment like gnome or kde.

Checing in late here.

Over the past few months, I’ve tried several distributions with a computer I built from spare parts (Gigabyte mobo w/integrated Ethernet and SiS7012 sound, Intel Celetron 1.7 GHz, 256 megs of memory, 120 GB HD, Matrox Millennium 400 video card, Intergraph 21sd95 monitor).

  • Red Hat/Fedora - seemed very sluggish compared to other distros. “Painting” effect typical when dragging wndows around the desktop.
  • SUSE - font rendering was strange, with some programs displaying menu bars that were absolutely huge. Somewhat KDE-centric.
  • Mandrake - recognized the integrated audio, but the only sound generated was a piercing screech. Otherwise, I would have kept it installed.

Ultimately, I dropped some coin and got Libranet 2.8, a Debian-based distribution. Install was easy and went smoothly, everything was recognized, the system is fast and stable, and I’m happy. If anything, the default program menu hierarchy seems strange.

I may try Vector Linux 4.0 on a slow (133 MHz) computer I have sitting in the closet. It’s supposed to be a good lightweight but fully featured distribution for older computers.

That story is over a year old. I’ve got newsletters from Mandrake claiming they’re profitable again, FWIW.

Go grab the latest version of Knoppix or some other live distro. It allows you to play (and if you choose your filesystems well, create a persistent home directory) and figure out how to get all your stuff working before you’re fully committed.

I like Vector. I have an older laptop (333 MHz, smallish disk drive) so I was looking for more lightweight distribution. It came down to Peanut or Vector. For me, Vector won. Nice distribution. Easy, solid install. Good hardware recognition.

It’s based on Slackware, though. Don’t know why Slackware bothers me. It just does.

So’s the post. The thread got bumped.

Do’h!

Re: Old threadness.

Yeah, it’s strange seeing Red Hat being recommended. Not anymore for the casual user.

Also re. old threads: it’s a shame there’s no time&date for each post, so we can actually know if it’s a new thread or not (or know which post bumped a year-old one)

ftg: Since when isn’t Red Hat for the casual user?

GorillaMan: There is a time and date for each post. You can’t see it?

Priceguy: The Red Hat 9.x series was the end of the line for that branch. They are also ending patches for the series. From now on they are focusing on their “Enterprise” line. While they have a cutdown “Desktop” version, it is far too cut down. If you want a distro comparable to the 9.x or earlier lines, you have to pay. Red Hat has made it quite clear that they care only about paying customers. Opinion: Shooting themselves in the foot.

Fancy that. I never thought that would happen.

Yeah, that’s why I use Mandrake now, and not Red Hat.

Yup, when they announced this, my entire research group switched over to Debian. In fact a lot of university research groups did this - switched to someone else.

I’d reccomend something like Gnoppix if you want to play around - it boots from a CD, and doesn’t actually write anything to your harddrive - its a Linux distro “to go” so to speak, ideal if you’re a bit wary about formatting and partitioning harddrives, or if you just want to see what its all about.