Linux on a Pentium 3?

[Ginge2k7]

I'm looking at maybe switching over to linux and was wondering what would be the best OS to install a P3 1Ghz with 192Mb of RAM?
I've been looking on youtube at various options and although UBUNTU looks gorgeous i dont think my machine could handle it, although there seems to be vids on there to the contrary.
Any ideas guys?

[JohnBradbury]

From what I've read [total beginner myself] you could try the following:

Dam Small Linux
Vector Linux
Xubuntu - this is basically ubuntu with a less resource intense desktop environment called Xfce

Minimum system requirements for Xubuntu:
To run the Desktop CD (LiveCD + Install CD), you need 128 MB RAM to run or 192 MB RAM to install. The Alternate Install CD only requires you to have 64 MB RAM.

To install Xubuntu, you need 1.5 GB of free space on your hard disk.
Once installed, Xubuntu can run with 64 MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 128 MB RAM.

[Ginge2k7]

Thanks john
so if i install linux will i need to partition my hard drive or just make the choice between running one or the other ? , as i have about 30% free on a 40gig hard drive, also is XUBUNTU easy to use for a linux noob?
Basically I'm fed up with the point and click world of windows

[ffreeloader]

If you can get a little more ram into that thing you can run it. Right now I have an old IBM E series server running a PIII with 640 megs of ram in it. It runs my DNS server, my Apache web server with 2 https and 1 http virtual servers, my DHCP server, and a MySQL database, SSH, and a VSFTPD ftp server.

It runs a very light load as it's a lab machine and I don't run a gui on it. It is pretty responsive and normally has around 200 megs of free ram at point in time.

If you're looking at running yours as a desktop with a full Gnome or KDE gui I'd recommend that you get it up to around 512 megs of ram.

With the ram you have DSL would fly. It's made to be small and light though so drivers at a premium and so are applications. The gui is radically different than what you're used to in Windows too. To access all the menus you right click on the empty desktop. There are no Start, Applications, etc... buttons at the top or bottom of the screen. Application installation is also a lot different than what you've seen if you've watched John's Ubuntu videos. It's all point and click, but just really different than anything else I've seen. DSL has it's own file extensions for that too. The other thing with it is that you'll find the applications are older ones and they were chosen because they don't use many resources. So, they aren't what you're going to be used to as far as functionality is concerned.

You can learn a lot about Linux from DSL, but it's going to be a rather steep learning curve.

[Ginge2k7]

Just thought I'd let you know I've gone for one of John's options, and downloading XUBUNTU as we speak, so I will post again if and when i get it up and running.

[ffreeloader]

Originally Posted by Ginge2k7

Just thought I'd let you know I've gone for one of John's options, and downloading XUBUNTU as we speak, so I will post again if and when i get it up and running.

Post again about it even if you run into problems and we can help you work your way through them.

[Ginge2k7]

Ok i downloaded Xubuntu 6.06 and burnt it to cd but it didnt boot so now im in the process of getting the most recent release, Xubuntu 7.10 which downloaded quite quickly by torrent. Im going to try burning at a lower speed and I've also taken the precaution on md5sum checking it and it looks ok at the moment.
I've added and extra hard drive from an even older pc and its only about 4Gb (yes that small) because i havent got that much space on my current hard drive and have no way of backing up my data on there eg no dvd/rw.
Can i install Xubuntu to an empty drive (d and if i do can i still access my main drive (c from it? Put another way if i make what is now d: my boot device so Xubuntu boots all the time instead of Windows can i still access media files such as music, film etc on c: (my Windows drive).

[ffreeloader]

Originally Posted by Ginge2k7

Ok i downloaded Xubuntu 6.06 and burnt it to cd but it didnt boot so now im in the process of getting the most recent release, Xubuntu 7.10 which downloaded quite quickly by torrent. Im going to try burning at a lower speed and I've also taken the precaution on md5sum checking it and it looks ok at the moment.
I've added and extra hard drive from an even older pc and its only about 4Gb (yes that small) because i havent got that much space on my current hard drive and have no way of backing up my data on there eg no dvd/rw.
Can i install Xubuntu to an empty drive (d and if i do can i still access my main drive (c from it? Put another way if i make what is now d: my boot device so Xubuntu boots all the time instead of Windows can i still access media files such as music, film etc on c: (my Windows drive).

A 4 gig drive will easily have enough room for Ubuntu. Yes, just make sure you install a program called ntfs-3g. It will allow you to mount, read, and write to your Windows drive.

[Ginge2k7]

Right, headache time. my 4 gig drive is refusing to be recognised after i installed Xubuntu. So after much tweaking with the bios and boot order of devices i give up.
I have a 40gig as my main drive which windows is saying has 16gig free, yet when i try to partition it using the partitioner on Xubuntu it says i only have 8meg free? my windows drive has never been partitioned before and all i want to do is use the free space or slightly less and install linux for a dual boot.
The minimum partition that Xubuntu wants to make is 21gig?
Helpppppppppppppp!!!!!!!!!

[MacAllan]

Originally Posted by Ginge2k7

Right, headache time. my 4 gig drive is refusing to be recognised after i installed Xubuntu. So after much tweaking with the bios and boot order of devices i give up.
I have a 40gig as my main drive which windows is saying has 16gig free, yet when i try to partition it using the partitioner on Xubuntu it says i only have 8meg free? my windows drive has never been partitioned before and all i want to do is use the free space or slightly less and install linux for a dual boot.
The minimum partition that Xubuntu wants to make is 21gig?
Helpppppppppppppp!!!!!!!!!

When you say you have 16GB free, do you mean free space on the drive, or free space on the NTFS partition that is holding your Windows install? It has to be as a separate partition if you want to install linux - you can't install it on the same partition as Windows. You may want to try linux out first on a LiveCD rather than actually installing it. Whilst most of the time it works fine, a linux install can render your windows setup inoperable - make sure EVERYTHING is backed up first before you start re-partitioning your drive and installing any flavour of linux.

I run linux on a 800Mhz PC just fine - but it has plenty of RAM - it will crawl on less than 512MB

[Ginge2k7]

Mac the 16gig is on the NTFS partition and i cant do anything through diskmgmt.msc either. Anyway i might wait untill i can get a bigger hard drive that i can partition from scratch i just dont want to lose any of my files or windows for that matter.
Other than that I can personally say from what I've tried of the live CD at the moment i think I'm going to be a convert very soon, I'm in love with it already !

[ffreeloader]

Originally Posted by Ginge2k7

Right, headache time. my 4 gig drive is refusing to be recognised after i installed Xubuntu. So after much tweaking with the bios and boot order of devices i give up.
I have a 40gig as my main drive which windows is saying has 16gig free, yet when i try to partition it using the partitioner on Xubuntu it says i only have 8meg free? my windows drive has never been partitioned before and all i want to do is use the free space or slightly less and install linux for a dual boot.
The minimum partition that Xubuntu wants to make is 21gig?
Helpppppppppppppp!!!!!!!!!

You would have to shrink your NTFS partion to get room to install Xubuntu. However, shrinking partions can get pretty scary if you have a lot of data you can't afford to lose. Most of the time it works, but when it doesn't, well, bye-bye data and it's reinstall time.

[Ginge2k7]

I now have Xubuntu 7.10 on my machine running from hard drive without problems (yet). I think it was something as simple as a missing jumper from the back of the drive (the 4gig)
Any suggestions for must have apps?
thanks for the help

[tripwire45]

Glad to see you got it sorted. I don't know if any of this will apply to your current setting, but there are no end of websites and blogs around teaching Ubuntu users how to have the "ultimate" desktop experience. Here's an example:

http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com/2...buntu-710.html

[Jakamoko]

Excellent and inspired thread, but might it not sit better on the Linux forum ?