Ubuntu runs fine as a server on a PII 400, but the GUI is a little slow with Gnome. Like others have suggested though, you can use a more lightweight wm.

I ran Gentoo on a computer with less than half those specs and it seemed happy enough. Of course I wasn't running X, it didn't even have a video card.

Quote: Original post by necromancer_df

Quote: Original post by Ra

Quote: Original post by necromancer_df
I wouldn't suggest Gentoo because you'd be there for weeks compiling. I guess you might be able to get binary packages for some things. Not sure what I would suggest though..

So? You only do it once. You can even *gasp* let it run overnight!

I installed Gentoo on a Pentium II 266 MHz with 64 MB RAM and a 6 GB HD. Compiling the base system, with -O3, without X or KDE, took about 20 hours.

Sure if you only want the base system you can leave it overnight.. and then when you want some other packages you have to set that off and leave it over night. Then you want more so you leave that over night.. in the end it has taken weeks to get all the software you want.

Bloody hell? It wouldn't take a night to build an entire package.

That's not low end at all

Yeah, I think lowend for us doesn't include any 32 bit x86 systems at all. And high end requires at the very least a latest-gen card on PCI express and an Athlon64. Anything in between those two extremes is considered entirely normal.

i've run slackware 10.1, ubuntu(5.04?), and debian 3.1(sarge) on my p2 350, 192mb pc100, ide33 box without any real problems. i'm currently using debian with gnome and it's about 99% stable. if you want more speed on that pc i'd say avoid gnome and kde. xfce is suprisingly fast on an old system for the features it has.

another nod towards gentoo... if you download and burn the larger cd it comes with some of the packages prebuilt. I mean you could just skip to stage 3 or something. Good things about Gentoo is it package management system, the gentoo support forums are excellent and you can really strip back a system to whatever you like.

Or you could do something like run a distribution like "MandrakeMove" actually off a CD without installing anything if you just wanted to muck around the linux without putting much effort in to it.

I have a similarly spec'ed computer which I run various services on (ftp, bit torrent etc)

VIA C3 400mhz processor
256mb RAM (PC133 I think?!?)
250GB Hdisk!

And my choice? Slackware. It's so easy to set up (bear in mind it was my first install from distro for about 5 years) and you can really strip out all the crap that comes with the big distros.

No problems so far and it runs 24/7

Yeah I just installed slackware to see how it will work. So far I have had a lot of problems with it...

I'm running Vector Linux on a machine with nearly the same specs (and I agree that I wouldn't call it very low-end - this is my main computer) and it runs just fine for what I do - programming, net stuff. It's a very light-weight Slack offshoot that's easy to set up and configure.