I have an old Pentium 120 that I plan to take apart and resassemble, to get some practical experience with putting a computer together before I build my own. I'd like to put Linux on it, just to see if I can do it myself. What I'm looking for is a small and lean Linux distribution. The HD on the computer is only about 1.5 gigs, so I need something that will fit onto that. Also, since the processor is only 120mhz, I need something that isn't too processor intensive. Can anyone recommend a lean distro that is not too processor intensive that I could install on my old machine? EDIT: Something user friendly would be nice as well, if possible. I'm still learning how to use Linux, so a GUI would be nice as well. [edited by - Peon on October 17, 2003 4:35:55 PM]

I would recommend LFS (Linux From Scratch), but it doesn''t sound like you have another Linux machine to build it on. It doesn''t get any smaller than that.

Gentoo needs to be compiled, which would take weeks (literally) on a P120.

Red Hat and such (Mandrake, etc.) tend to be bloated beyond what you would need.

Slackware is what I would consider, but I haven''t used it and v9 has got a bad rap.

Debian is an option, I think you can pretty much build it from scratch using apt. Never tried it though.

College Linux is an option, as is Knoppix if the system can boot from CD (unlikely, but maybe).

Research those options as best you can, and if you''ve got the bandwidth, try ''em all. You''ll only learn more the more you try. A system like that is great since you don''t have to worry about toasting your main system.

In any case, forget about KDE/Gnome for GUI. Go with Fluxbox or XFCE; something lightweight.

Also, don''t discout the *BSDs. OpenBSD (3.4 comes out Nov.1!) in particular, and probably FreeBSD, will clip quite nicely on that system. NetBSD is the other popular free BSD, but there are others.


"The sun is the same in a relative way,
but you''re older"
--Pink Floyd

As long as you install only minimal packages, almost any linux distribution can be cut down to 6-700 Mb even with a graphical interface. As for speed, I''ve never found any distros to be particular faster than any other, but 120MHz isn''t so bad as long as you don''t overdo it.

I actually have dual boot WindowsXP / RedHat 9 setup on my 1.8 ghz laptop, so I suppose I COULD build it myself, but I'm not confident enough to do it. I'll do a google on some of those options and see what I come up with. I haven't heard of Linux From Scratch before, but it sounds like it might work for a minimalist system. I HAD planned to put Redhat on it, since I've watched someone install it before (not that I could do it myself ) but it comes on 3CDs which is bigger than my HD. I'm not interested in buying a HD either, for that system, for obvious reasons.

So yeah, I'll do a bit of homework and see what comes up for (in particular) Debian, Slackware, and LFS.

EDIT: Wow, I turned up this form the Slackware site (minumum reqs):

quote:
Slackware Linux doesn't require an extremely powerful system to run (though having one is quite nice . It will run on systems as far back as the 386. Below is a list of minimum system requirements needed to install and run Slackware.

* 386 processor
* 16MB RAM
* 50 megabytes of hard disk space
* 3.5" floppy drive

Nice.. it really fits into only 50 MB?


[edited by - Peon on October 17, 2003 5:02:13 PM]

I have been using debian on a p166 for..., well 6 years without any problem. While I used that system as desktop I used afterstep as gui. Now it is an all around server, running icwwm+rox with a nice fat gkrellm panel.

I think debian would be kewl choice on a pentium.

There''s several distros that specifically strive to be small: Peanut Linux, Vector Linux and Crux are the primary ones. I like Crux, it''s very small but still geared towards general use as much as possible.

I have slackware on a 486 66mhz. I want to replace it with debian, though.

and ignore the people who tell you you need to have everything compiled yourself. It won''t do anything for you.

I''d recommend NetBSD, it''s the smallest of the BSDs, and doesn''t really install anything by default. It also supports almost any hardware you can think of, including a bunch of old crap that the other systems have deprecated.

Slackware 8.1 is what I would recommend.

Or FreeBSD.

Or NetBSD.

Or even OpenBSD.

Those may not be Linux''s but they run pretty great on even slow machines.

Running X on any *nix on a p120 is a painful thing, but it is possible.

Good luck on that.

________________
Fatal Frog Entertainment (FFE): My solo company in progress.

I agree with the OpenBSD mentions. I currently run it on some similar hardware.