Which is the best Linux distro for a 5 year old pc ?

[deleted]

I use mint 9 XFCE (32 bit) on my 8 year old dell 4600c. http://www.pcworld.com/article/113302/d ... 4600c.html
Works like a champ.

-Hinto

[marX]

I use mint 9 XFCE (32 bit) on my 8 year old dell 4600c.
-Hinto

How is the network manager in XFCE ?

Why not try Puppy Linux? They've got every version that has ever been produced out there for downloading, and it's small, light, and fast. If you feel like you need to get an older distro to work with your older computer, you can.

mikhou

I would give it a try definitely if I can't get the Mandriva 2010.2 working !

BTW, I'm having some trouble in creating the live image for usb. I don't know what is the issue
When booting, it gives a message that "No operating system found"

[deleted]

@marX
Never had a problem with the Network Manager.
-H

[marX]

Oh oh...Puppy Linux is based on Ubuntu
It won't work in my PC !!!

BTW, I'm thinking of getting a gfx card for as all of the 'buntu based distros have trouble with sis gfx.
Does a nVidia Geforce Mx 400 work, with 3d rendering ?
Or should get a 6200 ?

What about ATI, which is better interms of driver support, nVidia or ATI/AMD ?

[mikhou]

Only since Lupu (after 4.3.1) has Puppy been Ubuntu based. Get an older copy of Puppy (4.3.1 or earlier) and you shouldn't have a problem. It's fast, runs completely in RAM, and is feature-packed. I keep one on a USB stick for troubleshooting cptrs.

mikhou

[marX]

Only since Lupu (after 4.3.1) has Puppy been Ubuntu based. Get an older copy of Puppy (4.3.1 or earlier) and you shouldn't have a problem. It's fast, runs completely in RAM, and is feature-packed. I keep one on a USB stick for troubleshooting cptrs.

mikhou

I would keep that in mind !
Thanks for the heads up !!

Btw, I've installed Mandriva 2010.2 kde and tethering wont work.
Now is it possible to install Gnome's network manager in kde ?
If yes, can I download it from their repo using Mint and install them lafter bootin Mandy ?

If nothing works, I guess its time to try puppy or another light weight distro !

[gnomic]

Hmmm, kinda hard to know which is the 'best' distro for your PC - expect that would be the one that meets your requirements. You could have a look at antiX, there is a mid-sized edition of approx 340MB - currently testing M11 version, see forums under announcements.

There is a Puppy based on Slackware called spup which is around 120MB iirc. See the Puppy forums. There is also a version called LegacyOS but this has a somewhat older kernel which might not want to know about tethered phones.

Recently had a look at one called Galpon Minino which has Debian roots I think and prides itself on older hardware support. Thought it was quite useful - you might find you have to set the keyboard map as us to avoid odd characters popping up. $setxkbmap us sorts it.

Oh, another Puppy I have found good lately is Snow Puppy, around 230MB iso. Good luck with the quest.

[mikhou]

Another thing about Puppy is that it's around 100MB download. You really owe it to yourself to give it a try.

mikhou

[marX]

Another thing about Puppy is that it's around 100MB download. You really owe it to yourself to give it a try.

mikhou

Yeah but the Mandriva 2010.2 is stunning even though I can't browse the net

I'm gonna try Wvdial. If it fails, its time to move on
Thanks for the post...I've to say Mint forums were the most friendly Linux forum I've ever visited

If I can get an AGP gfx card or a new system, my distro of choice would be Linux Mint and then Mandriva Gnome.

[marX]

How about Wary puppy ?

Wary Puppy

After many beta test releases, Wary Puppy 5.0 was released on December 29, 2010, the first official public release. This is the first of my "Wary5" series of Puppy Linux, a "fifth generation" Puppy.There are two main reasons for this project:

1 Old hardware support
It has been argued that the Puppy 4.x series is the high-point of Puppy development, one reason being that it runs well on a very wide range of hardware. I wanted to move to a new software base (new libraries, compiler, kernel, drivers, applications) yet retain that hardware support.

2 Long term support
Just as the 4.x series is still in use, even though I originally compiled the base packages from source in November 2007, I would like to position Wary as the next long-term supported Puppy. Unlike most major distros that tend to be at the bleeding edge, Wary 5.x will stay as it is for the next 2 - 3 years with only bug fixes, incremental improvements and application upgrades when needed.

I guess it would support tethering too

But, I would miss Mandriva KDE, it is stunning. My friend who have a W7 box with a Radeon 5850 was amazed @my desktop. His W7 don't look that great

[kartooso77]

Hi, I too have a 5 year old PC buts its a NVidia. These distros should work just fine:
MEPIS based on debian stable - MEPIS 11 will be out any day now, Am using the RC on my PC and it is fast and stable.
Knopixx 6.4 also based on debian, claims to have very good support for large variety of hardware.
Linux Mint debian - based on debian testing, IMO makes ubuntu bite dust.
Puppy 5.2.5 - I use this on my 4 year old laptop which is also SIS based and it works like a charm, stable and very snappy.

[AlbertP]

The problem with SiS is that there is bad support for their most used cards, the 6xx range. With other cards, you still need to enable a driver to get better results, but at least it works fine if you don't need 3D.