Looking for an extremely lightweight Linux distro

[dsavi]

So I've got this old laptop that I'd like to put to use. Ubuntu runs quite slow on it, (You'll find out why in a bit) and I'm thinking it would be better to get something a bit smaller on it. This is what you have to work with:

 

336 mhz Intel PII

 

256 MB RAM

 

40 GB HDD

 

CD reader, with its... Quirks.

 

Yeah, I know. I'm surprised it runs at all, it's turning 11 next year :roll: But it can be a quite capable web browser.

 

Some of the distros I'm considering:

 

Puppy Linux (The problem is that I would always lose 64 MB of ram because it loads the OS onto the ram)

 

DSL (Don't know much about that one)

 

 

 

Any suggestions?

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

I'm thinking that DSL isn't so bad, due to its lightweight requirements. Give it a shot, let us know how it works on your machine.

[Errdoth]

Damn Small would be my first preference, but some other ones you might want to take a look at are:

 

Slackware (486 or better CPU, 32MB of RAM minimum, 500MB of free disk space)

 

Vector Linux (32mb ram, 1gb harddrive space)

 

 

 

loldinosaurcomputers. :P

[The Observer]

Hmm, perhaps you can try Xubuntu or Kubuntu?

[stevepole]

Hmm, perhaps you can try Xubuntu or Kubuntu?

 

 

 

I know personally that Kubuntu is not what he's looking for as it is larger in size then Ubuntu and doesn't run as smoothy in the first place.

[sloter]

Hmm, perhaps you can try Xubuntu or Kubuntu?

 

 

 

I know personally that Kubuntu is not what he's looking for as it is larger in size then Ubuntu and doesn't run as smoothy in the first place.

 

I agree.

[blade995]

Zenwalk

 

http://www.zenwalk.org/

 

 

 

It may be a little slow, but it is a full featured distro unlike DSL. Although I like Xubuntu a lot but the specs may be higher than Zenwalk.

[dsavi]

Damn Small would be my first preference, but some other ones you might want to take a look at are:

 

Slackware (486 or better CPU, 32MB of RAM minimum, 500MB of free disk space)

 

Vector Linux (32mb ram, 1gb harddrive space)

 

 

 

loldinosaurcomputers. :P

 

It LAMPs surprisingly well. And the battery life isn't that bad either. I suppose there's nothing to use the power up.

 

Edit: Oh yeah, and being Debian based is a plus.

[ClareJonsson]

What about DeLi Linux, that's extremely lightweight. I have an old 486 laptop laying around and DeLi Linux runs pretty well on that!

[JoeDaStudd]

Personally I would try Puppy Linux, its a lot more user friendly then DSL (try running the embedded version inside your OS and you'll see what I mean). Having said that DSL has a lot more apps then Puppy Linux.

 

Then again I've heard very good things about slitaz.

 

 

 

When you start looking at mini-linux distro's you need to decide exactly what you want it to do.

 

 

 

I'm currently working my way through Wikipedia's list of mini-distros (link), they all have there ups and downs, its more preference then anything.

[dsavi]

Personally, I'm not one for user-friendlyness. If it has a basic GUI, I'm happy.

 

And then there's still that with Puppy taking 1/4 of the availible ram (I've maxed out the amount of ram can't add any.)

 

And if you got DeLi to run on a 486, it will run on this for sure.

 

 

 

BTW disk space usage is not a problem at all.

[ClareJonsson]

I tried Slax Linux today and I was VERY impresed, I ran it off a USB pendrive and it worked extremely well.

[Imamonkey]

DSL would definitely be worth a try. But you could pretty much try any distro and maybe use Fluxbox as your desktop environment. Fluxbuntu is based on Ubuntu. The only problem might be is I am not sure they are very active at the moment as far as maintaining it? Pretty much any distro with either Xfce or Fluxbox for desktop environment might work well? If you are familiar with Linux already, I would suggest a distro you like and go with one of those two desktop environments and see how it works for you.

 

 

 

Edit: You might give Xubuntu a spin as mentioned earlier. It is ubuntu with the Xfce desktop environment. Saves you the trouble of having to set it up yourself. And honestly, why not. Not like you are going to have to pay two or three hundred dollars to see if you like it or not.

 

 

 

Another one, I have ran it off cd. Didn't mess around with it much either. I assume you can install it to hard drive. I am not gonna do all the research for you. But to quote from the website "Feather should be able to run on a 486 with 16Mb of RAM, but only in console (non-graphical) mode. To use X, 24Mb of RAM or more are required."

 

 

 

Here is a link to the site for you. http://featherlinux.berlios.de/about.htm

[JoeDaStudd]

Just read thought the new posts and they reminded me of a project I was looking into.

 

I've just looked it up again and it looks like something you might be interested in.

 

Its call Linux from scratch (link), its a guide and resources on how to build up your own Linux.

 

 

 

I'm sure if you have the time you could create your ideal low spec OS.

[dsavi]

I was thinking of doing something like that with T2 but I was thinking of making a distro for virtual machine use on my Vista partition. Never occurred to me that I could use it for that. :-k

[Imamonkey]

I plan on building a LFS system one day. This is the only issue I see with this as an answer. How tech savvy are you with Linux? This isn't really a good option unless you are pretty freakin savvy with Linux.

 

 

 

At least that is my opinion. I am not saying you couldn't do it if you aren't really hip on Linux. But it certainly would be a fun project if you have the time and patience. And it would be a great learning experience. If you go that route, I for one would love to hear how your LFS project goes.

 

 

 

Edit: Also, with LFS, you have to manually keep your system up to date. You also have to rebuild the entire distro if you ever want to update the kernel. You may not mind this. You may not even ever want to update the kernel once you get it working. But it is definitely what I would call labor intensive.