Arch Linux

hussam

Member

Registered: 2006-03-26

Posts: 572

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Recommeded setup for a neighbor's old computer.

A neighbor told me today that she has a 1.3Ghz Pentium 3 based Celeron with 128MB Ram and a very old 8MB PCI graphics card. It also has a 40GB hard disk. Windows XP has been running extremely terribly lately mainly because of the terrible graphics card. Opening more than one program at once brings the PC to a crawl. She basically just needs something to write documents, store photos and listen to music. I told her that if she could get AGP card and maybe add another 128MB stick of ram, it would dramatically improve the performance of windows XP expecially since 1.3Ghz isn't exactly obsolete. But she doesn't really want to spend any money on that computer. I'm thinking that I might be able to install some low spec Linux distribution on that PC and add mplayer, gimp and Openoffice there too.
Any recommendations for what distribution she might want to consider?

dolby

Member

From: 1992

Registered: 2006-08-08

Posts: 1,581

Re: Recommeded setup for a neighbor's old computer.

u need something that works mostly out of the box for an old computer. newbie friendly distros are out of the question cause the amount of ram is very little. i have a 128mb ram pIII 800mhz pc dual booting a very customised edition of windows 2003 server and arch with dwm and does quite well. about linux your best bet is arch, slackware or one of the slackware related distros. its still gonna need some customising tho. try zenwalk maybe. its the closest to your needs i can think of atm. it will probably save lots of time customising

edit absolute too

Last edited by dolby (2007-11-14 01:34:31)

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hussam

Member

Registered: 2006-03-26

Posts: 572

Website

Re: Recommeded setup for a neighbor's old computer.

dolby, yeah ok. I've never tried slackware. But I'll check out zenwalk. I was going to suggest Arch to her but I remembered that the minimal Ram requirements of the Arch installer were upped to 166MB.

Last edited by hussam (2007-11-14 01:53:28)

dolby

Member

From: 1992

Registered: 2006-08-08

Posts: 1,581

Re: Recommeded setup for a neighbor's old computer.

u can use the core cd and boot with lowmem. the question is whos gonna maintain it, unless u plan on hopping in every now & then

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There shouldn't be any reason to learn more editor types than emacs or vi -- mg (1)
[You learn that sarcasm does not often work well in international forums.  That is why we avoid it. -- ewaller (arch linux forum moderator)

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: Recommeded setup for a neighbor's old computer.

+1 for Zenwalk. Good call Dolby.
Zenwalk is just Slack with xfce, only it takes a fraction of the time to hack into shape, and on an older machine you'd want an expedient install.

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Sauengard

ModestUser

Member

Registered: 2007-11-16

Posts: 4

Re: Recommeded setup for a neighbor's old computer.

First, Hello to Archlinux community, this is my first post (it does not give you much opportunity to post questions :-) )

I am playing around with Arch and an old P3/600, 128 MB RAM. With the Xfce desktop, it takes about 50 MB of RAM, so there is enough left for Firefox, abiword etc. (maybe not all at once) and it runs rather smoothly. In general, I think that most memory recommendations for Linux are exaggerated. If your neighbor is not linux experienced, you should probably not choose s.th. below xfce like any /.+box/.

In any case, it would be nice to see if openoffice runs on a 128 MB machine.

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Sigi

Member

From: Thurgau, Switzerland

Registered: 2005-09-22

Posts: 1,131

Re: Recommeded setup for a neighbor's old computer.

Welcome to the Arch Forums, ModestUser.

I second that. I'm running dwm and i really love it. But I'd never put it on someone elses box. Its too "abstract" for a linux newbie. I would also suggest xfce or maybe openbox. I'd put Arch on that box. (I've never tried zenwalk, might be a good choice too) I'm still punished to maintain my friends Win boxes and can only dream of looking after other peoples linux systems...

Cheers Sigi

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Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch.

dumas

Member

From: Sydney

Registered: 2007-09-01

Posts: 103

Re: Recommeded setup for a neighbor's old computer.

I think Puppy Linux might be the best solution. Resource-wise it is damn small, JWM is similar to Windows, which might help transition. It does everything she needs, and can be customized.

I find it interesting in our mentioning of WMs though. Our first thoughts would be to strip KDE and GNOME, then the next thought would be whether *box or tiling managers are too geeky, depending on preference of the person. Some others might suggest xfce. Few would remember Enlightenment or JWM and co.

ps. I use fluxbox.