On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 07:40:37 -0400, Joel Desrochers <joelgroup@hotmail.com> wrote:

I second the vote for Slackware. Text based install and overall performance make it my favorite for older hardware. Unfortunately I prefer 128 MB RAM minimum for console only and around 256MB for X. Memory is cheap though.

I am still quite happy with my P300/384MB RAM with Slack. Before Slackware, I toyed with a few minimalist distros (Peanut and Grey Cat Linux but found most of them lacking in either reliability or application packages/support).

Two other tips on trying Linux and picking a distributionto try: 1) Don't rule out Knoppix, the popular CD-ROM bootable distro. You can use it on another box (possibly your current Windows 9X or XP) without modifying anything on the hard disk. Also makes a great PC diagnostic tool. http://www.knoppix.com/

2) Consider reading up on the many distros on one of the many websites that list information. I would also consider debian. (knoppix is based on deb). The number of "requred" packages is very small with a huge set of optional

I am a huge fan of knoppix. I have used it since version 3.0. I find it is the most effective to test a system for hw support. The amazing thing is I run it on 2 laptops and most , if not all, the suspend/freq scaling works well out of the box. I usually do a hard drive install after I am happy with the functionality and it works great. packages. ou should be able to build a nice system even with lower horsepower. The nice thing about deb also is it gives you a very nice package install and dependency tracking system with apt. Nothing against Slack and its tar.gz but deb packages are really nice because they help with dependencices. Thanks Brian