any ideas on what distro i should use?

DrSpanky · May 3, 2005

hey hey

im looking for a lite version linux, for running and apache web server and to server an ftp. want something that dont require much power or ram. any ideas what would suit me, dont require any support for anything else?

im also looking for for a version for an old laptop i want it to play dvd's and mp3s for when im in the car driving and basic word processing for college work but needs to me small

only has a 2gb hdd

both the desktop and laptop are 433mhz cellerons and have 64mb of ram each

kaltag · May 4, 2005

Gentoo / Slackware / Debian

electrorcamd · May 4, 2005

I would say either Debian or Arch. They are both binary based with good package management. Gentoo would probably take up too much space with all of the source code, and it would take forever to compile things on those, especially with only 64MBs of RAM.

DrSpanky · May 4, 2005

ive just downloaded the torrent file damn theres like 7 cds

electrorcamd · May 4, 2005

For which one? If it's Debian, you actually only need a couple of them to get a base install and a few extra programs. The first one is the base, the second is the next most important/common packages, third is next, et cetera. Unless they changed it, you should only need like the first 2 cds for Debian.

DrSpanky · May 4, 2005

i will download the first 2 and see if i need another if i dont then i aint wasting all that bandwith lol

electrorcamd · May 4, 2005

Taken from here: http://linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=4
NOTE ON DEBIAN 3.0: For more information on the "boot flavors" in the ISO names for i386, see this page. Most people should be able to boot from the first CD. If you need newer hardware support, or ReiserFS or ext3, you'll want the bf2.4 CD to boot plus Disc 1. The CDs contain binaries in order of popularity - the most popular binaries are on CD 1, next most popular on CD 2, etc. It's possible to do a basic installation with just CD 1.

MRD · May 4, 2005

I'd go gentoo and just do a CLI install... no GUI. You don't need it for what you are doing. The download for the gentoo minimal install CD is about 50 mb total.

Flamed_Chip · May 4, 2005

Gentoo will take a long time to compile on an old 433 with 64MB RAM, as will every package you emerge. You could use distcc to speed things up but that doesnt work with a lot of packages. Also as has been mentioned, Gentoo does take up a large amount of disk space with Portage and Source code. Usually y basic CLI installs have been ~1GB. A Fresh install I made on my laptop is already up to over 3GB with kde-base, O

and The Gimp emerged.

eNightmare · May 4, 2005

electrorcamd said:
I would say either Debian or Arch. They are both binary based with good package management. Gentoo would probably take up too much space with all of the source code, and it would take forever to compile things on those, especially with only 64MBs of RAM.

Arch may not work. It doesn't sound like this PC is an i686. But there are some Arch/Slackware derivatives that support 486's too. If you are interested, i can hunt them down for you.

My vote goes for Slackware.

trailnut · May 4, 2005

Add another vote for slackware.

Gnufsh · May 4, 2005

I say gentoo. It will take quite a while to compile, but after that it should be fairly fast and small.

MRD · May 4, 2005

It shouldn't be too bad since he doesn't need to compile that much. He just needs a CLI.

eNightmare · May 4, 2005

trailnut said:
Add another vote for slackware.

minislack would work perfect as well...

Flamed_Chip · May 5, 2005

DrSpanky said:
im also looking for for a version for an old laptop i want it to play dvd's and mp3s for when im in the car driving and basic word processing for college work but needs to me small only has a 2gb hdd

He could use a CLI for the server with no problem but he'll need a GUI for work processing and DVD watching etc. I'd deffinatly recommend a binary based distribution over a source based one on a machine that old.

MRD · May 5, 2005

Hmm 2gb hdd... that's rough.

I would still use gentoo and try out distcc.

Cheator · May 5, 2005

Slack or slack derivative. I once installed slack on a 386 DX, 600 meg drive, 16 meg of ram, and it was almost decent. PLus its only one CD

DrSpanky · May 6, 2005

MRD said:
Hmm 2gb hdd... that's rough.

I would still use gentoo and try out distcc.

well its 2gb at teh moment it it handles well i will try pick my self up a bigger hdd and then use the laptop, for storting stuff for when im sorting out other peoples computers

any way im just testing it out with debian i may as well install a few different distros see what suits me the best so links and any information on other distro's would be nice...saves me looking

DrSpanky · May 8, 2005

not had much luck with debian after ive installed it and gand run it i wont launch gdm because of some of teh display settings for some reason... not hand a chance to sort it out.

gentoo runs at 1024x768 when i cant view anything over 800x600

and ive been playing around with dsl (damn small linux) running from live cd it runs great and had everything i need but after i install it for some reason lilo dont work lol so im not having much luck

eNightmare · May 8, 2005

you should be able to change those settings in gentoo fairly easy with xorgconfig...
I would also recommend arch, as it should run just fine on your pc and is lightning fast in my experience. I'm currently running minislack which is really easy to configure and get running.

any ideas on what distro i should use?

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