Phoenix Network Forums

I think im going to buy an old computer (probably some pentium 2 or something) and put a copy of Linux on it, but as yet, i have no experience with it. Can anyone suggest a good Linux distro i should go for?

For an old machine? Probably just stick debian on it or Ubuntu.
But IMHO I'd put FreeBSD on it, not Linux.

for old computers, the best choice in my opinion is Damn Small Linux, (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/), based on KNOPPIX (Debian), and for old computers....

It Have much apps, it is very faster and versatile.

You should probably check out distrowatch.org, they have a huge list of distros, after reading some of the reviews there, your choice should be alot easier.

I would say Ubuntu, I struggled with getting used to the other distros that I tried but loved Ubuntu and the support thats out there for it... they have good support in their IRC and forums...

Try Damn Small Linux.Thats the best for old computers

SuSE is great for the beginners, the graphic installation is friendly and it creates the partitions and configures each device automatically

AWRG

Hello,
It really depends what your using it for, I really like slackware linux for my desktop / router PC since its just a bit more advance or user config friendly, but for my notebook i choose Suse since it can handle acpi a bit better and has alot of features for notebooks.

I also would suggest freebsd i have found it to be stable and reliable

I realy receive enormous attempt from this forum
and question on "frankst0" i think you have to see http://forums.phoenix-hosting.org/viewtopic.php?t=2048
there you can find some interesting link`s

pugrit wrote:
Linux Distribution Chooser

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php

Well my opinion is that DSL i.e Damn Small Linux is very good for old pc's.But it depends from what you need to do with your pc.Ubuntu and suse are indeed the easiest linux distros but i don't think they will be usefull with a P2.If you need the pc for a server i think slackware is the best solution but this is not the easiest linux distro.The fact is that slackware is a little bit difficult.Another solution is to compile gentoo with only the applications and services you really need.This is going to take some time since compiling progs in such a old pc is a little....Well have a little look at centos too.Anyway before installing any distro check it from the live cd first.

imho it depends on how old you computer is.... start with a debian base system... if you dont get as far as setting it up use DSL live cd to see if it starts your graphic desktop if not you'll just be able to make a server/router out of it... and even that is questionable

slabby wrote:I would say Ubuntu, I struggled with getting used to the other distros that I tried but loved Ubuntu and the support thats out there for it... they have good support in their IRC and forums...

you should really take ubuntu its really userfriendly and a good distro to start with!

dionysos wrote:

slabby wrote:I would say Ubuntu, I struggled with getting used to the other distros that I tried but loved Ubuntu and the support thats out there for it... they have good support in their IRC and forums...

you should really take ubuntu its really userfriendly and a good distro to start with!

I would rather recomend xubuntu ,xfce is faster and smaller than gnome.

frankst0 wrote:I think im going to buy an old computer (probably some pentium 2 or something) and put a copy of Linux on it, but as yet, i have no experience with it. Can anyone suggest a good Linux distro i should go for?

first figure out whether you want to build a server or a desktop. a linux server requires very little in the way of hardware muscle, it's lean and doesn't require a gui and all that other fluff; a dekstop build, however, is another story.

imho, linux isn't ready yet for the desktop prime time, and specially not on an old pc.