Linux question?

[snidy]

I want to instal linux on an older system that's collecting dust. A pentium 133 with 64 mb ram. Will it be fast enough?

 

[cleverhandle]

To do what?

 

[pac1085]

I use a P133 with 64MB Ram as a web/e-mail server & gateway/firewall. Runs good with Debian. I don't have X installed, but if you really wanted you could run *box, xfce, windowmaker or one of those other low-resource window managers with netscape 4 or something...

 

[n0cmonkey]

I use OpenBSD on a p133 with 48mB of ram. Runs fine as a firewall, although Im planning on retiring it soon.

EDIT: Oh yeah, Linux should run just as well.

 

[lowtech1]

What Vortec said is true which I have done also with Debian, but web server will be slow.

 

[snidy]

I'm mostly going to use it to learn it. I'm new to Linux and I need it for school homework. I'll probably try and network it to my system to shair internet.

 

[scarfase99]

im a total linux newb, and i tried installing Mandrake 9.0 on a 233 machine, and the thing CRAWLED

just forewarning

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: lowtech
What Vortec said is true which I have done also with Debian, but web server will be slow.

For static content on a low to medium site it would be fine, the problem arises when you start writing dynamic stuff that is cpu-hungry. I have some crazy php scripts that take my p233 a good 15 seconds to process :Q

 

[drag]

Linux can run easily on that.. the pratical lower limit is a 486 with 16 megs of ram, but the bottom feeders can struggle thru with a 386 with 8 megs and extremely painfull experiances with a 386 with 4 megs of RAM..

And you could use X windows with that two, but you ain't gonna be able to have non of them purty apps... Like mozilla or KDE/Gnome stuff...


I recommend using a minimilist distro such as Slackware or Debian, or OpenBSD if you feel adventurious. If you are not sure you know enough to use those versions of Linux you can make do with more user freindly versions such as Red Hat if you make sure that you try to do a minimilist as a setup as possible. By using windows managers such as IceWM, Blackbox, or TWM, you can have pretty snappy response with from you box without thrashing the snot out of your Harddrive...

Athough for the most usefull learning tool possible I'd stay away from X and use command line stuff... If you want something nice setup a ssh server on your box and use the combination of Putty.exe (windows app)/screen (nice terminal session manager) on your windows box.. That way you can have tutorials and references going on in the background in you windows desktop but have a nice interface with your Linux computer. You could use the normal telnet stuff built into your DOS stuff, but I find the combination of ssh and putty.exe to be very superior...

If you want to have a purely unix experiance, learn to use vi (or emacs) well, use links or lynx for a text based webbrowser. Also if you have to type stuff by looking at the keyboard constantly or your a hunt-and-peck type of person, It is a very usefull thing to know. My vi sessions were almost unbareable until I was able to train myself to type without looking at the keyboard (well mostly ) Now I've gotten up to about 40 WPM and now it seems like a pain in the butt when I have to reach all the way over and use the mouse when typing something out or to make corrections, it just slows me down. My linux bash experiance increased in quality drasticly when I learned to type well. (or well enough)....

Plus they have a modified version of links out there that support running graphics in your vid card's frame buffer so you don't even have to use X windows at all to get gifs and jpegs to appear on your terminal (only works from the actual computer, not thru a remote session)

I have a old proliant server box that has 80 or so megs of ram, and a 486 that has been replaced with a pentium overdrive chip (about 80 mhz). It runs my main ssh/ftp server and at one time I had nfs/cups/ftp/apache/samba services all running at one time with no slowdown noticable when using a terminal or uploading/downloading files over my cable modem line.

 

[Spyro]

I once had an old 486 with 32mb of ram. It ran Debian just fine, but it took days to install the main system.

I had it set up with Xwindows and a few games.

 

[mrwiseguy]

Sure, but make sure you don't install anything higher than Redhat 6.0 or it will be a pain the ass to work with it.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: mrwiseguy
Sure, but make sure you don't install anything higher than Redhat 6.0 or it will be a pain the ass to work with it.

Anything less than RH 7.x will be just as much of a pain.

 

[Nothinman]

Sure, but make sure you don't install anything higher than Redhat 6.0 or it will be a pain the ass to work with it.

Not at all. You just have to be carefull what packages you install. I currently run Debian woody on a P133, I don't use X though.

 

[cleverhandle]

OK, then... like the others have been saying, you'll want to forget about GNOME/KDE completely. X is doable with something like Blackbox or IceWM, and even Mozilla should run OK after a long load time - the 64 MB should help a lot. I've run Moz on a P150 with 32MB and it wasn't unusable, just not very pleasant. Distro-wise, if you want to learn and keep things minimal, I'd say Slackware is the way to go.

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle
OK, then... like the others have been saying, you'll want to forget about GNOME/KDE completely. X is doable with something like Blackbox or IceWM, and even Mozilla should run OK after a long load time - the 64 MB should help a lot. I've run Moz on a P150 with 32MB and it wasn't unusable, just not very pleasant. Distro-wise, if you want to learn and keep things minimal, I'd say Slackware is the way to go.

Why slackware instead of debian?

I've made some extremely minimal setups with debian w/o going through to much trouble.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: wizardLRU
Why slackware instead of debian?

If you're new to Linux, understanding all the choices that dselect gives you is not so easy. I know well enough which "recommended" packages I can ignore with no loss of functionality, but when I started I would have had no clue. And, sometimes, less is more. If you just want to learn the system, having 8000+ packages is not necessarily a good thing. Slack has probably about 200, partially because there's just a lot fewer programs, and also because Slackware doesn't split up source tarballs into 3-4 subpackages a piece. Makes things easier, IMO.

Note - I'm not arguing that Slackware is the very best distro for a minimal install, just that it's a better distro to learn on.

 

[snidy]

OK, I changed my mind after several attemps with install. This thing's a peice of sh(t. Another question though. Can I set up a triple boot with Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Red hat?

 

[drag]

I just like slackware alot. It a perfect choice for, ah... well.. a slacker. I just like to hack-n-slash my way thru the /etc/ folder and the start up scripts. If I don't like how the startup script is set up from defualt I may just build my own, if just because I'm bored or to suite a specific purpose. If something works, thats good enough, I don't want to worry about upsetting any package managment stuff. Makes for a robust system...

however if you got a computer that you want to store information on.. or you just don't feel like monkeying around a whole lot, then debian is great, you can build up services, tear em down, build it back up again. Cleaning up after yourself in SLackware is a chore, and if you get into a game of always upgrading your OS (usually from source code randomly downloaded from all over the internet) then the whole dependancy thing can be a real pain in the arse, but with debian you don't have to worry about it.

or another way of looking at it:

SLackware for complete freedom and independance from a set way of doing things, You can do the whole complete Unix customization thing from a high quality standardized base. In debian you try to do this you lose the whole advantage of having stuff like apt-get or dselect.

Debian: for stadardized installations that need to be adaptable (within limits) for a wide range of client/server relationships and which you expect long-lived installations. Also very good if you are not the only person that needs to administrate it!

Both are very tweakable and poweruser freindly distros, just do it in different ways..

but all this is probably pointless to a newbie! (or to most people...)

also slackware can be installed and up and running very quickly, the debian install can be very daunting at first to a windows user...