SEO

I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it. I make my
living in the Wintel environment and cannot risk just jumping out of XP
into a new OS before I am familiar with it.

The PC in question is a Dell Dimension XPS R400

Intel PII 400
128 MB RAM
10 Gig HD
D-Link DFE-530-TX
MS Wheel mouse
Logitech Access Keyboard
Crystal Sound (on the motherboard)

What distro would run the best on this configuration? I tried Lindows
4.5 which I guess would probably run very well on my AMD 1800 machine
but is as slow as molasses on the PII.

It would be nice if I could get this machine zipping along and find some
applications that are similar to what I use everyday (Dreamweaver,
Photoshop, Outlook, Pinnacle Studio, Acoustica, Sonic Fire Pro, MS Word
and MS Access).

Looking forward to hearing what I should do.

Thanks,

Leo

Hi,
Leo wrote:

> I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it. I make my
> living in the Wintel environment and cannot risk just jumping out of XP
> into a new OS before I am familiar with it.
>
> The PC in question is a Dell Dimension XPS R400
>
> Intel PII 400
> 128 MB RAM
> 10 Gig HD
> D-Link DFE-530-TX
> MS Wheel mouse
> Logitech Access Keyboard
> Crystal Sound (on the motherboard)
>
> What distro would run the best on this configuration? I tried Lindows
> 4.5 which I guess would probably run very well on my AMD 1800 machine
> but is as slow as molasses on the PII.
>
> It would be nice if I could get this machine zipping along and find some
> applications that are similar to what I use everyday (Dreamweaver,
> Photoshop, Outlook, Pinnacle Studio, Acoustica, Sonic Fire Pro, MS Word
> and MS Access).
>
> Looking forward to hearing what I should do.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Leo


I installed Debian Potato on a machine with lower specs and it worked fine,
then upgraded to Debian Woody which also worked well; I was happy with it.

My machine had an AMD K6-2/300 with 128 megs of ram and a 6 Gigabyte HD
which I partitioned in two as I was dual-booting with Win98SE.
I found KDE sluggish to start, but Gnome popped right up when I started it.
In any case the performance was as good or better than with Windoze, Since I
could dual boot, I could compare directly. Never did any benchmarking
though. I also had a Crystal sound card...worked fine with the OSS sound
driver in the kernel, but I had to fiddle around a bit first with the
configuration (in Potato, I think).

If you do install Debian Woody, you might use the bf24 kernal install so as
to get the latest and greatest; you might even want to get the kernel
source and recompile to get the optimum for your CPU.
A friend of mine installed Debian Sarge on one of his machine, but it really
is still in the 'testing' stage at present. Your mileage may vary ;-)

Hope my input is useful.
....Dave Dawson
P.S. My real email address is: beagle7[X]pacificcoast.net
replace the [X] with an @

Leo wrote:
>
> I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it. I make my
> living in the Wintel environment and cannot risk just jumping out of XP
> into a new OS before I am familiar with it.
>
> The PC in question is a Dell Dimension XPS R400
>
> Intel PII 400
> 128 MB RAM
> 10 Gig HD
> D-Link DFE-530-TX
> MS Wheel mouse
> Logitech Access Keyboard
> Crystal Sound (on the motherboard)
>
> What distro would run the best on this configuration? I tried Lindows
> 4.5 which I guess would probably run very well on my AMD 1800 machine
> but is as slow as molasses on the PII.
>
> It would be nice if I could get this machine zipping along and find some
> applications that are similar to what I use everyday (Dreamweaver,
> Photoshop, Outlook, Pinnacle Studio, Acoustica, Sonic Fire Pro, MS Word
> and MS Access).
>
> Looking forward to hearing what I should do.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Leo

I put Fedora Core 1 on a PII 233 with 128M RAM. It was pretty freaking
slow but it did work. That same machine ran Mandrake 8.1 okay some time
ago. If you want to try out the latest software you might just want to
go ahead and put up with the slowness and see what is out there now. I'd
go with Fedora Core 1 or the latest Mandrake. You might also try
Knoppix. You can boot and run it from a CD on your main system without
messing with your windoze drive. It doesn't have everything you would
get in a full distro but it has enough to play around with and get your
feet wet. It's slow from the CD but you can load it all to RAM with a
switch if you have enough. See the Knoppix site for details. The best
option if you don't want to risk anything on your windoze drive is to
get another HD for Linux. There are ways to set up linux in a dual boot
without having to touch your doze drive. Then you boot through the boot
loader to either OS and if you decide to go back to doze only you can
just make it the master drive again and blow away the Linux drive and
use it for something else. Linux is addictive though and you probably
won't want to do that anyway. BTW, I also use Dreamweaver a lot. The
Linux counterpart is Nvu from what I understand: http://www.nvu.com/
I haven't tried it yet because I still need doze for other things, but
it looks pretty good. For Photoshop look at The Gimp(comes with Fedora
Core and probably most distros). For Outlook - Evolution (also comes
with Fedora). I'm not sure about some of the others but Open Office also
comes with Fedora and probably most others and it has a replacement for
Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. To get ideas about Linux replacements for
dozeware check out:
http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-l...en/table.shtml

Have fun

"Leo" <leoanddona@yahoo.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:40784018.65A6@yahoo.com...
> I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it. I make my
> living in the Wintel environment and cannot risk just jumping out of XP
> into a new OS before I am familiar with it.
>
> The PC in question is a Dell Dimension XPS R400
>
> Intel PII 400
> 128 MB RAM
> 10 Gig HD
> D-Link DFE-530-TX
> MS Wheel mouse
> Logitech Access Keyboard
> Crystal Sound (on the motherboard)
>
> What distro would run the best on this configuration? I tried Lindows
> 4.5 which I guess would probably run very well on my AMD 1800 machine
> but is as slow as molasses on the PII.
>
> It would be nice if I could get this machine zipping along and find some
> applications that are similar to what I use everyday (Dreamweaver,
> Photoshop, Outlook, Pinnacle Studio, Acoustica, Sonic Fire Pro, MS Word
> and MS Access).
>
> Looking forward to hearing what I should do.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Leo

I had no problem running Mandrake 9.0 on my 233 , 128 ram, 400 MhZ is not
old.......

On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 14:42:32 -0400, Leo <leoanddona@yahoo.com> wrote:

>I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it. I make my
>living in the Wintel environment and cannot risk just jumping out of XP
>into a new OS before I am familiar with it.
>
>The PC in question is a Dell Dimension XPS R400
>
>Intel PII 400
>128 MB RAM
>10 Gig HD
>D-Link DFE-530-TX
>MS Wheel mouse
>Logitech Access Keyboard
>Crystal Sound (on the motherboard)
>
>What distro would run the best on this configuration? I tried Lindows
>4.5 which I guess would probably run very well on my AMD 1800 machine
>but is as slow as molasses on the PII.
>
>It would be nice if I could get this machine zipping along and find some
>applications that are similar to what I use everyday (Dreamweaver,
>Photoshop, Outlook, Pinnacle Studio, Acoustica, Sonic Fire Pro, MS Word
>and MS Access).
>
>Looking forward to hearing what I should do.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Leo

Leo,

I like to keep my answers simple. I see no reason why that machine would
have trouble with any distro. A PII 400 is not that old. Spend a few
bucks on another 128M memory stick. It will make all the difference in
the world.

--
"Now are you talking about what it is you know
Or just repeating what it was you heard."
Grace Slick
To E-mail use: rpiotro(at)wi(dot)rr(dot)com

Leo wrote:
> I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it. I make my
> living in the Wintel environment and cannot risk just jumping out of XP
> into a new OS before I am familiar with it.
>
> The PC in question is a Dell Dimension XPS R400
>
> Intel PII 400
> 128 MB RAM
> 10 Gig HD
> D-Link DFE-530-TX
> MS Wheel mouse
> Logitech Access Keyboard
> Crystal Sound (on the motherboard)
>
> What distro would run the best on this configuration? I tried Lindows
> 4.5 which I guess would probably run very well on my AMD 1800 machine
> but is as slow as molasses on the PII.
>
> It would be nice if I could get this machine zipping along and find some
> applications that are similar to what I use everyday (Dreamweaver,
> Photoshop, Outlook, Pinnacle Studio, Acoustica, Sonic Fire Pro, MS Word
> and MS Access).
>
> Looking forward to hearing what I should do.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Leo

If you are only interested in the answer to your original
question, skip the following and read 2nd paragraph from the
bottom :-) If you want some extra advice, read on...

You will want to do some serious studying and *BACK UP* your XP
installation before starting to install Linux, regardless of
distro! If something can go wrong it probably will.

You can also find some helpfull information from other people's
experience by searching Google Groups for 'dual boot' 'XP'
'Linux'. You might be able to install without any problem by
just reading the installation manual for your distro, but it is
a good idea to do as much additional reading as possible. Print
out hard copies of the most pertinant information before starting
and / or take notes.

The most important subjects to read about are dual-booting Linux and XP,
LILO, using the Linux rescue floppy, editing boot.ini, partitioning,
MBR, and XP disaster recovery. Be prepared to recover from any problems
you may have. It only takes ONE wrong tap on the enter key to trash your
XP MBR!

Do *NOT* install LILO into the MBR if this is your first time
installing a Linux / XP dual-boot system! You will almost invariably
have problems, although there are probably some who may jump into the
discussion and try to convince you otherwise. You can always use
DiskProbe under XP, or dd under Linux to save the new Linux boot sector
to a file which you then point the XP boot loader to in boot.ini. There
are a couple of other ways under Linux to save the new boot sector to a
file, too, but I haven't used them and don't have time to search for
them right now.

Here is an explanation of how to do it with DiskProbe:
(Note: assumes your Linux primary is the second partition on the first HDD).

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...a.net&rnum =9

Since Linux is more forgiving than XP when it comes to partitioning
and partition table entries, use XP to create the Linux primary and
swap partitions, but don't format them because you want to be able
to use them as Linux swap 82 and Linux Native 83 type when you install
Linux.

Since I am assuming this is your first time installing Linux / XP in
dual-boot configuration, I would use this layout for your partitions:

hda1 - existing XP installation
hda2 - Linux primary
hda3 - Linux swap

If you follow the advice from the previous poster and get another HDD
for Linux, ignore the above partitioning layout. In that case you may
want to use something like:

hda1 - existing XP installation

hdb1 - Linux primary
hdb2 - Linux swap
hdb3 - /home

*** As for which distro to use, I have seen Redhat (don't know version)
run well on a 433MHz Dell with 256MB RAM and it was pretty nice. It was
Fairly responsive, too.

You probably wouldn't want to try Debian for your first Linux system
but I would definately recommend it after you familiarize yourself with
Linux. It will even run satisfactorily on a 200MHz Pentium Pro with 96MB
of RAM.

Disclaimer: While I try to give the best advice possible, I am not God
and therefore am fallable. I accept no liability for my advice and it
may actually be totally wrong in some situations. *BACK UP YOUR SYSTEM*
and follow the "Preparing for Disaster Recovery" procedures for XP.

HTH
--
Parts of original message omitted when not needed. See thread.
M. Glenn Lewis
mlewis00@tctwest.nospam.no.com.net.wrap72

Leo wrote:
> I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it.
> ...
> What distro would run the best on this configuration?

Vector linux runs well on older machines. It is based on Slackware.

-Scott
--
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/nightlin/www/

Scott Nightlinger (null_ptr@uiuc.edu) writes:
> Leo wrote:
>> I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it.
>> ...
>> What distro would run the best on this configuration?
>
> Vector linux runs well on older machines. It is based on Slackware.
>
And Slackware runs on old machines, without having to be derivative
of anything.

Methinks that comment from the Vector webpage is merely marketing.
It makes no sense otherwise. If they can whittle down Slackware
to Vector Linux then the only difference is someone else is making
decisions. And considering some posts I've seen, Vector leaves out a lot
of things that is included with Slackware, out of some philosophy that
it all should be on a single CDROM. So, I gather, they leave out
plenty of console applications, but make sure the X based stuff
is in place. Ironic, since it's X and the desktops that make
an "old computer" suffer. And if you leave off one X based application,
all the left out console stuff could be included.

Michael

Rich Piotrowski wrote:

> On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 14:42:32 -0400, Leo <leoanddona@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I have an old PC and I would like to give Linux a try on it. I make my
>>living in the Wintel environment and cannot risk just jumping out of XP
>>into a new OS before I am familiar with it.
>>
>>The PC in question is a Dell Dimension XPS R400
>>
>>Intel PII 400
>>128 MB RAM
>>10 Gig HD
>>D-Link DFE-530-TX
>>MS Wheel mouse
>>Logitech Access Keyboard
>>Crystal Sound (on the motherboard)
>>
>>What distro would run the best on this configuration? I tried Lindows
>>4.5 which I guess would probably run very well on my AMD 1800 machine
>>but is as slow as molasses on the PII.
>>
>>It would be nice if I could get this machine zipping along and find some
>>applications that are similar to what I use everyday (Dreamweaver,
>>Photoshop, Outlook, Pinnacle Studio, Acoustica, Sonic Fire Pro, MS Word
>>and MS Access).
>>
>>Looking forward to hearing what I should do.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Leo
>
>
> Leo,
>
> I like to keep my answers simple. I see no reason why that machine would
> have trouble with any distro. A PII 400 is not that old. Spend a few
> bucks on another 128M memory stick. It will make all the difference in
> the world.
>


I agree, I am running Mandrake 9.0 on a AMD K6-2 500mhz. 160MB Ram and
an old agp video card. It does nicely. Stick 128 in and it should help
alot. Good luck.

Tiger Hawk wrote:

> I agree, I am running Mandrake 9.0 on a AMD K6-2 500mhz. 160MB Ram and
> an old agp video card. It does nicely. Stick 128 in and it should help
> alot. Good luck.

Agreed. I run Fedora Core 1 on similar machines and have little issue, as
long as I don't try to run large applications simultaneously. OpenOffice is
unaccpeable on such machines: Mozilla is not good, but I use them as file
servers, web servers, and SMTP servers with no problem.