What OS/distro for a PII desktop?

[berniew]

Entry level user, internet browsing, 'office' stuff and that is about it.

[mattyk6]

I'm running Win2k Pro on a PII 400 w/ 128 MB of ram, seems fast enough to me. Have a friend running WinXP Pro on a PII 400 with 160 MB of ram and it seems slower.

[NetNinja]

better have memory

XP Pro seems to run nice on systems that use a 500Mhz processor or better.

256Mb of ram is minimum. better have more if your system can handle it.

[David_G17]

linux, of course (fedora core 2).

[berniew]

Originally posted by David_G17
linux, of course (fedora core 2).

Trying to d/l it. SUSE would not install on this computer

[physicsdevil]

Try Knoppix. It's a smaller download than core 2 (1 cd as opposed to 4), and it's full featured. It includes KDE as a heavier GUI, Fluxbox (among others) for a light GUI, easy install, and it's a LiveCD, so you can give it a try before installing it.

[berniew]

Originally posted by berniew
Trying to d/l it. SUSE would not install on this computer

knoppix didn't work either, had to go with w2k

[HerrGlock]

What's the specs on this computer? You'll probably need 128 meg RAM to do much beyond WIN98 or so. Older distros of Linux will load with down to 16 Meg RAM but you'll not have much graphical with that. 128 meg is min for Fedora Core 2.

Save yourself from waiting twice. Download this:

http://fedora.mirrors.tds.net/pub/fedora-core/2/i386/os/images/boot.iso

It's 4 meg.

Then set it up for an http or ftp install (that's in the menus when booting from that CD)

Set up the site to:
fedora.mirrors.tds.net
and the path to:
pub/fedora-core/2/i386/os/

Then, as it installs, it'll download too. You can go to lunch.

DanH

[berniew]

Gateway desktop
PII 300
6 Gig HD
224 Meg RAM

Originally posted by HerrGlock
What's the specs on this computer? You'll probably need 128 meg RAM to do much beyond WIN98 or so. Older distros of Linux will load with down to 16 Meg RAM but you'll not have much graphical with that. 128 meg is min for Fedora Core 2.

Save yourself from waiting twice. Download this:

http://fedora.mirrors.tds.net/pub/fedora-core/2/i386/os/images/boot.iso

It's 4 meg.

Then set it up for an http or ftp install (that's in the menus when booting from that CD)

Set up the site to:
fedora.mirrors.tds.net
and the path to:
pub/fedora-core/2/i386/os/

Then, as it installs, it'll download too. You can go to lunch.

DanH

[berniew]

I think the problem is the CDROM drive, the same iso images will install inside VMware

btw FC2 failed as well

[nothingness]

what has the failure(s) been?

[berniew]

Originally posted by nothingness
what has the failure(s) been?

I didn't write down the exact messages.

SUSE had a wierd video problem during the install (I tried the
"safe?' mode but that didn't work either and made it to the point where it was trying to load patches and then gave me media errors

FC2 only made it to the point where it was beginning to load the kernel (I could read ISOLinux !@$#%%#^ something or other) and then it would sit and do nothin

knoppix gave me a prompt and a notice that it couldn't load something or other.


All three work in VMware (although FC2 won't load a graphic interface, I suspect I have to manually monkey with the video)