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SliTaz is an open source and free operating system providing a fully featured desktop or server in less than 30 Mb. SliTaz is simple to use, fast and stable.

IS a very small distro.

If you want to stay with Mint, check out Mint 6 Fluxbox CE. (Mint 7 Fluxbox isn't available yet). Fluxbox is light and fast and it will install on as little as 192 Meg of ram if the direct install option is chosen.

Other options include Crunchbang, Puppylinux, Mepis 8.2, Tinyme, SLITaz, Tiny Core, Fluxbuntu, and others.

ethan wrote:I have recently got my old PC working again. It's an old Socket 7, with 256mb of fairly slow RAM, and has a 10GB IDE HDD.
What I am requiring is a distro that will make the most out of these small amount of resources. Mainly for use on the Internet and other normal usage.
I am already considering DSL, but don't need something that small. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Thanks for any help.

I would suggest you look at Puppy Linux. I have found it to be stable, surprisingly capable and not too bad looking. http://www.puppylinux.org/ Good Luck

Two more i often use (i love live distros ):
AUSTRUMI: http://cyti.latgola.lv/ruuni/ (Important: choose your language in the first splash screen)
Slax: http://www.slax.org/

Im looking for one too, 20 gb HD and 256 mb RAm, which should i use?

Have a look at the posts above. They'll do a good job on your system.

Another idea would be [url=ftp://ftp.free.fr/pub/Distributions_Linux/MandrivaLinux/official/iso/2009.1/mandriva-linux-free-2009.1-i586.iso]Mandriva Free[/url] with an LXDE desktop.

Oliver

The linux mint gloria runs great on oldish hardware.
The fluxbox version is our lightest.
DSL is pretty light, and so is puppy linux.

grimdestripador wrote:The linux mint gloria runs great on oldish hardware.

I'm sorry but I disagree with that statement. I volunteer for a small charity that donates refurbished older computers to needy people. We have tried many distros on these older machines. We do not install any distro using KDE or Gnome, as this is not a pleasant experience for anyone, especially when the RAM available is <512MB (which it often is on older machines). Such distros are also very sluggish on processors less than about 1200MHz.

For oldish hardware I would recommend the xfce or fluxbox editions but definetely not any distro running KDE or Gnome.

I would go for puppy linux.
I've been using it on a PIII with 320 MB RAM, it's very light weight and usable.

Ubuntu distro's, even based on XFCE of fluxbox, will be sluggish.

As I said before, Mandriva offers an LXDE desktop, when installing from the Free-DVD. Momentarily I'm using mainly Mandriva with KDE-3.5.10 on my notebook with an P-III 900MHz, 256MB RAM and 40GB of harddisk. As a secondary distro I'm using Mint 7 with GNOME/XFCE, which is a bit slow using GNOME.
XFCE is o.k., but I don't know it very well and I personally prefer LXDE...

Oliver

antiX from Mepis.org is a lightweight O/S - but it's still some 466Mb in size.
But it is designed for those <much> older machines.

lagagnon wrote:

grimdestripador wrote:The linux mint gloria runs great on oldish hardware.

I'm sorry but I disagree with that statement. I volunteer for a small charity that donates refurbished older computers to needy people. We have tried many distros on these older machines. We do not install any distro using KDE or Gnome, as this is not a pleasant experience for anyone, especially when the RAM available is <512MB (which it often is on older machines). Such distros are also very sluggish on processors less than about 1200MHz.

For oldish hardware I would recommend the xfce or fluxbox editions but definetely not any distro running KDE or Gnome.

i have to agree with this post. LM / Ubuntu runs sluggish to VERY sluggish on my compaq evo Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz with 2GB memory intel graphics, but have NO issues running on XP SP3

Havn't tried Fluxbox but am tempted as it dose become very sluggish on my setup either using LM / Ubuntu.

Hope theres a fix...could it be, possibly a memory leak...poor drivers.... don't know....but there again, Linux in general has JUST stepped up a few notches in the past yrs but is still VERY far behind Microsoft quality.

But i must admit though, i now have the linux bug only after so many yrs because only now has linux become a AVERAGE user friendly OS over in the past 14++ yrs of my personal computer experiance, and thanks greatly to LM & Ubuntu, i have the linux bug and really would LOVE to see it develop much further in the next future distro release's.

ibm450 wrote:LM / Ubuntu runs sluggish to VERY sluggish on my compaq evo Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz with 2GB memory intel graphics, but have NO issues running on XP SP3

You have an entire thread already dedicated to your sluggishness, where many have attempted to help you. It is NOT normal that a machine of that speed and RAM is sluggish with Mint Gloria. You do have a systems problem somewhere, which obvously you have yet to sort out. Please re-enact that thread and give us more data to help you.

Gloria would never have been released as a final version if it had performed that poorly on such a computer, as the fault would have been reported long ago. You are attempting to taint Linux in general because your system is sluggish, which is an invalid argument.

lagagnon wrote:

ibm450 wrote:LM / Ubuntu runs sluggish to VERY sluggish on my compaq evo Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz with 2GB memory intel graphics, but have NO issues running on XP SP3

You have an entire thread already dedicated to your sluggishness, where many have attempted to help you. It is NOT normal that a machine of that speed and RAM is sluggish with Mint Gloria. You do have a systems problem somewhere, which obvously you have yet to sort out. Please re-enact that thread and give us more data to help you.

Gloria would never have been released as a final version if it had performed that poorly on such a computer, as the fault would have been reported long ago. You are attempting to taint Linux in general because your system is sluggish, which is an invalid argument.

what the hells your problem dude! if i was to taint linux as you state, i would have made far worse comments about it and switch over completely to XP again. i have read far worse comments, ALL over the net regarding bucket LOADS of issues with linux and i mean BUCKET loads including un-resolved issues with linux.

im no GEEK or a geek guri on linux - im only submitting my experience i have had with LM/Ubuntu. not all of us can afford cutting edge hardware to get LM/ubuntu to perform as good as xp. im a fan of both m$ and linux so im free to express what i think of both OS

Yes ive threaded many posts both on ubuntu and lm forums with the appropriate data needed - but with no resolvent - yes the simple answer is, get a better machine for gods sake, but why should i spend heaps on a machine just to run bloated OS (vista / linux) to do my every day simple tasks - taint linux....i dont think so...you taint newbies...i do think so

no need to take submitted post so seriously dude - just get on with it like i do with my sluggish performance on my machine running linux. MacPuppy i must admit runs very good, so that may be the answer for me.

+1 for SliTaz

@ethan: Any new updates on your Linux experience?

ethan wrote:I've installed and got working Mint Fluxbox. It's working well, the only thing I am not liking on it so far is the lack of start menu. Anyway to place one on the task bar?

ill second that, it makes it a little unpleasant

Fluxbox has never had a start menu button nor will it ever have one. That is what separates it from all the others. You simply right click anywhere on the desktop and the menu pops up exactly where the cursor is. Very convenient. And much faster than moving your mouse cursor down to the bottom left and left clicking.

If you want a Start Menu button use a different light window manager that supports that - such as IceWM, JWM and many others...

EDIT: you can also bind the menu to a keyboard shortcut (eg the Windows Menu key), which is also faster than using the mouse!

lagagnon wrote:
EDIT: you can also bind the menu to a keyboard shortcut (eg the Windows Menu key), which is also faster than using the mouse!

cool..cheers for the info