What Distribution will be good for this computer?

[st449]

Hello there. I have used ubuntu, linux mint and debian before but my new computer just crashed and I am running xp on a 12 year old desktop blah Anyways does anyone have any lightweight suggestions that I can use on an HP Pavilion 6746c with 348 mb ram, and an intel celeron 733 processor?

 

[pane-free]

First off -- welcome! glad to see you joining this helpful group;

Secondly -- do what you can to up your RAM to 512MB; if you need another 256 stick, I have PC100 and PC133 RAM;

Thirdly -- what do you want to do with this old hardware? If play solitaire and check email and surf the 'net, then suggestions are easy. Distros like antiX (Base Install) or Zenwalk Openbox (Base Install) or TinyCore come to mind to place on a 30 gig hard drive. LiveCD distros like Puppy or SliTaz could be used, as well.

Again, RAM is the biggest limiter, in your case. My experience points to distros with no DE, just a WM.

Best wishes!

 

[st449]

First off -- welcome! glad to see you joining this helpful group;

Secondly -- do what you can to up your RAM to 512MB; if you need another 256 stick, I have PC100 and PC133 RAM;

Thirdly -- what do you want to do with this old hardware? If play solitaire and check email and surf the 'net, then suggestions are easy. Distros like antiX (Base Install) or Zenwalk Openbox (Base Install) or TinyCore come to mind to place on a 30 gig hard drive. LiveCD distros like Puppy or SliTaz could be used, as well.

Again, RAM is the biggest limiter, in your case. My experience points to distros with no DE, just a WM.

Best wishes!

Really all I need a computer for is basic things like going on the internet, watching videos, some music streaming and other things like word processing.

 

[pane-free]

Really all I need a computer for is basic things like going on the internet, watching videos, some music streaming and other things like word processing.

Watching videos may be too much to ask of such a dinosaur. AVIs may be okay.

 

[diegosuse]

Zenix can be your solution. Also you can try peppermint ( as last resort ) or puppy. Hope helps

 

[DaReaper]

I had to Google a bit to find a couple of OS's that would run fine for you.

I found out that running Debian Linux would require about 128MB of RAM : (512MB Recommended) http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch03s04.html.en

You can also try out Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux- http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/. I was told that Puppy Linux was very lite and had most basic functionality of basic Linux.

If you want to browse and watch videos, it might be possible but i don't know how well it would sum up in terms of performance.

 

[scotty]

I would try and upgrade your ram (its cheap, easy and makes a huge difference)

and then I would recommend Puppy. I don't really know many of the small distros except Puppy.

 

[Darwin]

I agree with the posters who say you need to update your RAM - it is cheap to do, especially if someone is throwing away an old machine.

The problem you have is the limitation side of things - I mean the machine you are talking about I literally stripped off what I needed and threw the rest away with one similar that I had because I could see no real other use for it.

Definitely consider a newer HD and some extra RAM or you will be having problems - other than that it is a great starter point if you are just going to use the basic text editors.

 

[Smokey]

I'd definitely look into Puppy for the amount of ram you have stated. It'd work nice and seem somewhat snappy especially on such a dinosaur of a PC.

 

[oldslackware]

The solution is simple:install Slackware without Desktop Enviroment.