My use for a pc has changed quite a bit over the past year or so and im at the point where there is very little holding me onto windows. I currently use windows 2000 pro (rarely used anything else!) and would like to consider linux for the long term. My pc spec is low so Ubuntu is out of the window, and I cant be arsed doing a LFS again. It would take a week solid of compiling! I want to keep the distro as simple as possible. I dont want loads of bundled software... I dont even have a cd-rw drive. I literally need to read email, browse the net and edit spreadsheets and listen to music (sometimes) thats it! I suppose I need thunderbird, firefox (with fireftp), openoffice and a media player. This is why I have done LFS in the past, I end up with a very useable OS due to my requirements. Pentium II Celeron 450mhz 192mb PC66 80gb HDD Audigy 2 Intel 810i integrated graphics. What do you guy suggest? Most of my work is done in Excel, Staroffice and Corel Quattro. I need all three though I suppose I might just be able to do without Excel. Staroffice is pretty well the same as Openoffice which I know works on Linux (!) .... but what about Corel Quattro? Can I get that to work in wine? I also have a windows mobile phone and will need to use microsoft active sych from time to time. tbh As long as my phone will be recognised so I can upload music every now and then it wont matter about activesynch. I can just use one of the office computers for that when I need it. I just use a normal usb lead (like for a camera) on my phone. Oh and my camera (canon a40) The rest of my programs (infranview, apachefriends, daemon tools, winmerge) will probably have thier own version/replacement for linux. I think the only program I will have to wave goodbye to will be a theme designer for my phone. Ive got a Netgear wifi card but the matching router had linux drivers so id imagine my card will work ok? Many Thanks for your suggestions.
i would suggest any distro that supports Automatix and avoid KDE & other resource hogging WMs as you specs is too low, as AT said here just experiment with WMs, there are plenty here not necisarly Ubuntu only requires 256Mb, so your not far off (although i can't find the min CPU for Ubuntu) you may fin that puppy works better for you, although personally i like Debian (my next distro will be Debi) BTW: Puppy is a very very light distro is that a spreadsheet program post an url, and i'll try it well i use bluetooth to connect to my mobile BTW: check out Distrowatch, and try a *nix chooser to help you decide on a distro Edit: Automatix makes using *nix v v easy, giving you the time to learn *nix at your own pace
Thanks Donkey. Just about to have dinner so im ina bit of a rush but ill checkout your suggestions. I should have added earlier that ideally id like to use xfce. Its easy enough to install but would be best if it is already seyup with a distro. Many Thanks
I'd suggest Debian, since it's designed in such a flexible, desktop-agnostic manner. As such, it's only as light or heavy as you want it to be. I would use Debian Etch with XWM window manager and a really light desktop such as WM, Fluxbox, IceWM, or maybe Xfce if you want something with more features. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from installing all of them, and switching between them when you feel like it. In terms of the OS installation, I'd recommend you do an "expert install" of Debian (with or without the GUI) so you can fine-tune the packages that go into your new installation. Also, for your specs I'd use the JFS filesystem for everything but your /boot -- for boot, I'd use either ext2 or ext3. For everything else, JFS has lower CPU overhead than ext3, and it is much faster as well. For your browser, installing Firefox, etc is fine. If you want to use Debian's build of Firefox, it's called Iceweasel, and it's actually got more security features than the Mozilla build of Firefox. Still, you can install the mozilla build if you really want it. However, I wouldn't really recommend either for a system of those specifications. Opera or Epiphany will both be much faster and more responsive on a slow CPU like that; that's where you truly get to appreciate how bloated browsers like Firefox and Mozilla truly are. Still, it's Linux, so there's nothing stopping you from using all three! For music, I use Audacious (a Winamp clone) for playing loose files here and there, and Amarok for my huge music collection. Audacious will probably run just as well on a Core Duo as it will on your P2 ~450, since it's pretty simple. However, Amarok uses a full-blown database, and keeps a library of your album covers, favorites, etc. It's way too heavy for a system of that era. If you want something like that, I'd try Juk or Rythmbox. I can't attest for how well they'll run on your rig, 'cause when I was stuck with a 300MHz laptop a while back, I mostly used CLI-based MP3 players to preserve my scanty resources. Openoffice is the open-source version of Staroffice. You can buy a commercial version of Startoffice for Linux if you really want it though. Corel Quattro is just a basic spreadsheet program, right? What's wrong with OpenOffice for that, or one of the many other spreadsheet applications? If you really, really need Quattro for something specific, you may be able to WINE it. But it's never going to be optimal when run that way. It's best just to use a native replacement like OOo if possible, since it's meant to run on your platform. infranview is nice, but GIMP is nicer. If you just wanted a viewer (not an editor), there are many many good viewers for Linux like GLIV and Kuickshow. apachefriends XAMPP is native to Linux, if that's what you mean. But why run a LAMP server on your low-end desktop? Don't you think that's asking a bit much from your limited resources? Daemon tools is a Windows tool to add UNIX-like daemonizing functionality, so it's totally pointless on a real server OS like Linux which can do all this natively. Same with WinMerge, you can diff and merge files natively with no need for extra software. Of course, there are many, many choices for tools which can do this in Linux.
Many thanks AT. You have answered questions I know I would have wanted answering in the future! Apachefriends is just so I can edit my website on my pc instead of using up my host bandwidth. I have a control panel built into the admin side of the site which I need to use you see. Quattro is required because it is the only spreadsheet which allows more than 256 columns.... I need around 300 and quattro can do 18,000 odd. Ill start downloading Debian now..... 3dvds or 21cds !!! On a 1mb connection I think I might just buy it.
Hmm, it's probably best to use a normal HTML / XML / PHP editor instead of running XAMPP on your underpowered PC. Otherwise, you're going to run out of RAM and end up in swap-city. To put it plainly, 192mb RAM simply isn't enough for a desktop plus a full LAMP stack (primarily the MySQL part, since it is a full-blown database), IMHO. On such low-end hardware, I like to have as much RAM free for running the software you need to be responsive. Additionally, the P2 architecture is effectively limited to 256mb RAM max, since the L2 on that processor isn't fast enough to address more than that without a major slowdown. So unfortunately, you can't just add more RAM to workaround the issue. Fair enough, but there's no guarantee it'll work as expected. If you can get it working with the latest WINE, you should post on the compatibility list over at winehq. There's no need to download the full thing, when you'll only use a small selection of the packages anyway. Why not just use the little netinst installer? http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r0/i386/iso-cd/debian-40r0-i386-netinst.iso
I did see the network install. It means me lugging the rig into the office so that I can get to the ethernet but I suppose it better than spending money! Ive just started up apache and mysql and they use 23mb and 6.5mb of ram respectively. Ive never had an issue with it. All I do is install it, put my site in htdocs. Go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin to setup my database then go to http://localhost/catalog to see the site and localhost/catalog/admin to go to the admin side. The actual site is php embedded into html so I do that in notepad. Apachefriends lets it access the mysql database and helps me upload my 750,000 cell spreadsheets without getting a timeout like when I do it over the net. Firefox is the ram killer on my machine! Firefox and Thunderbird.
I finally got round to hooking the pc up to the router but debian couldnt mount my cd rom. I dont know if its the rom drive or the controller. Im going to try my ubuntu cd and if that works ill download xbuntu.
When I install debian I dont ever get the chance to select xfce over gnome. I have dont an expert gui install a few times now and the option deifately isnt there. I know you can get it to do it if you do a normal expert install (non gui) but I dont think I can be arsed even trying that! Id prefer a gui!. Can anyone help me install debian with xfce. Also, Ive bumped my ram up to 256mb and gnome works fine. If it wasnt for all the crap that installs with it id happily use that!
well personally i prefer KDE, but, with your specs i'd prefer gnome over xfce first you have to download & install xfce, it can be downloaded from here, then make sure you’ve the following: GCC (GNU C/C++ compiler, 4.2.0 is the last version at this time) bzip2 data compressor libgtk2.0-dev (GTK+ runtime libraries) libxpm-dev libsm-dev libice-dev pkg-config (It’s a tool to manage and compile libraries) after you download the last version of the xfce installer, change directory to where you downloaded it, and Code: sudo chmod a+x <package name> to make it executable, then Code: sudo ./xfce4-4.4RC2-installer.run now log out & change session type to xfce & login, your now on xfce BTW: you can now delete the installer as i've said, i prefer gnome to xfce, but thats me :meh: BTW: it may not be the easiest / best way to install xfce but it works <full stop>
Just install it normally then install Xfce. When you go to login, change your session to Xfce. You can add as many desktop environments as you like this way, or remove the old ones you don't want (e.g. Gnome).
