What is the 'best' nix/bsd distro for an ancient Pentium?

[PurpleFnords]

I like to recycle PCs, so I want recomendations for an extremely lightwieght distro to put onto a couple of old pentiums I have lying around. They will be given to a poor family I know. Both are between 100-200Mhz, with around 16-48MB of 66Mhz Edo RAM, and 500MB or larger hard disks. A GUI like Fluxbox, along with a web browser and media player that can handle decoding MP3s in realtime on such lacking cpus (without stuttering) would be great, along with an msn protocol instant messenger that has a nice straight forward interface. I want a simple to install distro, that doesnt require me to recompile the kernel to get bearable performance on these dinosaurs, and has the basic apps listed above as part of the default ISO install. Is that too much to ask? If so, please explain why.

Your suggestions please...!

[knock7]

I really like OpenBSD - security, simplicity, BSD, etc. I think you have a good idea on a WM. I used to use blackbox on old machines. I have heard ratpoison is like norton commander, if you are into that. Gnome is nice on newer machines.

[PurpleFnords]

Thanx, I will check those WMs out. Ive been meaning to tinker with BSD flavours for a while now also.

[schmidt]

I hate to say it but, Debian stable could be a good alternative. Set up ssh servers on all the boxes and offer to take some time once a month to keep things up to date etc.

[PurpleFnords]

But is debian stable FAST? Fast as in optimised for older x86 cpu instructions, chipsets, and video. (eg generic s3 trio 64s) Performance is the issue for these boxes, security is second priority, in this case.

[HackerX]

There's really no such thing as optimised for older cpu's, it's really just lacking the optimisation for the new cpu's.

[PurpleFnords]

So would you consider MMX or 3D-Now extensions as new then?

[replicant]

I used to love Slackware. So probably for that old of a machine, probably slackware. My hubby and I prefer Gentoo and Ubuntu these days.

[jesse]

OpenBSD/FreeBSD, a light variant of ubuntu, or even a live-cd linux distribution called Damn Small Linux (DSL) might be what you are looking for. DSL's web site does list many functions and then some. I have not used it, but it looks promising.

[PurpleFnords]

Cheers Jesse. Yes ive used DSL Linux on and off for a while now, though in this case it is a little too lightweight. At this stage ive honed the final choice down to openbsd/slackware/puppy linux. I really like puppy linux, its pretty cool. Just wish it was called Kitten, as im not so much of a dog person. :laugh:

[walfin]

Linux supports the most hardware so I'd suggest u go with tt.

For accessories I'd suggest IceWM & gnome office.

distro doesn't matter but u should select 1 with less bloat. debian tsting would b gd.

[Ytterbium]

I used QNX which fitted on a boot floppy as an emergency oh crap my ADSL connection died, now I have to use the 56k on the 486.

Worked very well actually. Although you can't do much.

[PurpleFnords]

Same here, it was a nice tech demo for the time. I did exactly the same thing when i needed a quick bootable OS and Web Browser, except with an external 28k hard-modem. If you like tiny operating systems, you might like menuet. It is very 'cute'. I used to spend far too much time watching assembler demos, as you can tell.

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[Ytterbium]

Same here, it was a nice tech demo for the time. I did exactly the same thing when i needed a quick bootable OS and Web Browser, except with an external 28k hard-modem. If you like tiny operating systems, you might like menuet. It is very 'cute'. I used to spend far too much time watching assembler demos, as you can tell.

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. that I'm logged in I saw your link. Mighty cool, I have to take a closer look at it.

[elsdfr]

Archlinux.. lightweight install and the distro can update to most of the current software versions. I'd like to recommend a BSD but unless you're familliar with it you might loose a lot of time.. FreeBSD will do what you want or then NetBSD if your paranoid and know what you're doing. To be honest I wouldn't be running a GUI on a 500MHz unless you're willing to do all the config and then with the small WM most people just won't get it... considering the price you can pick up 1GHZ+ these days anyway.