 Old Computer, Looking For An Easy To Install Distro |
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 Nov 26 2007, 01:38 PM
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#1
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 Member  Group: Members Posts: 41 Joined: 14-May 07 From: Southern Illinois Member No.: 130,831  |
I recently found an old PC in storage and I am wanting to revamp it just to have some music on it and then I can hook the PC up to my receiver and surround sound. I have been thinking of putting an old Debian distro on it but haven't been able to find anything that really seems to fit. It's a 667 processor with only 64 meg of ram. I believe the HD is 10gig (or maybe a little bigger)... It might be 20 but regardless. This thing is kind of a piece of junk but I would hate to not do anything with it. Suggestions? Especially where to find a good older distro to put on it? Thanks! |
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Nov 26 2007, 05:58 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 41 Joined: 14-May 07 From: Southern Illinois Member No.: 130,831 |
I was going to go with Knoppix but I just don't have enough memory even with the 512 additional that I partitioned by itself.
I'm on the hunt again for what I'm going to use for this old beast. This post has been edited by seedsofchaos: Nov 26 2007, 06:11 PM |
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Nov 26 2007, 07:09 PM
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#3
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 Forum Regular Group: Members Posts: 337 Joined: 2-June 06 From: Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, England Member No.: 70,484 |
with 64M RAM, you may be tight stretched. Have you looked into damn small linux? Also, there should be a flavor of deb that will fit that, that's part of thier mantra. I think your biggest challenge would be to find a desktop that will do it.
This post has been edited by Joedude: Nov 26 2007, 07:10 PM -------------------- |
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Nov 26 2007, 07:59 PM
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#4
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Member Group: Members Posts: 41 Joined: 14-May 07 From: Southern Illinois Member No.: 130,831 |
Yeah I burned a DSL ISO but haven't had luck with it for some reason. Should it be bootable? The HD is wiped now and I have two partitions set up. One just set aside with 512.
Someone suggested the Absolute Distro so I guess I'll give that a whirl as well... Any suggestions as far as getting DSL to boot from a CD? Maybe I just burnt me a coaster or something... |
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Nov 26 2007, 10:04 PM
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 60 Joined: 7-July 06 Member No.: 75,020 |
Can't say I've tried every single distro out there, but having used most of the major ones, am partial to PCLinuxOS and Mandy for full featured desktops and VectorLinux 5.8 Standard (not SOHO) for memory challenged hdwr. I have used Xubuntu, SAM, Antix, DSL and Puppy but VL seems to fit my personality better.
Anyways, VL will run on 64mb RAM, but I don't recommend installing with less than 128mb . You can buy a couple sticks of 128mb RAM on ebay for $20 and have a great little server. |
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Nov 26 2007, 10:38 PM
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#6
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 Computer Masochist Group: Moderator Posts: 10,660 Joined: 27-January 07 From: Cleveland, Ohio Member No.: 108,618 |
Just a hunch, I'm kind of betting his computer maxes out with 128.
Mark -------------------- Mark
 why won't my laptop work? Having grandkids is God's way of giving you a 2nd chance because you were too busy working your butt off the 1st time around Avatar by Handplane |
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Nov 27 2007, 07:00 AM
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#7
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Forum Regular Group: Members Posts: 337 Joined: 2-June 06 From: Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, England Member No.: 70,484 |
you know, it's a lot of work, but slackware will probably run on that...
As far as DSL, if yopu made an install media out of a disk, as with all os install media, it needs to be bootable... -------------------- |
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Nov 27 2007, 10:38 AM
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#8
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Member Group: Members Posts: 41 Joined: 14-May 07 From: Southern Illinois Member No.: 130,831 |
So as far as DSL, the CD I made ended up with nothing on it somehow. I was using Nero and from what I can see it didn't even burn... Weird. Got a copy of PowerISO Portable and everything went smooth.
Currently I'm installing Absolute and will probably try Slackware and then some flavor of Debian next. I'll just start plugging away until something works good. Note... the latest distro of Knoppix... not so good on a 64 meg system.  As far as memory I'm going to have to take a look at what I can plug into it. Plenty of old systems around here somewhere. Might have to scavenge for mem. I appreciate all the suggestions. I'll keep this updated until something works. |
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Nov 29 2007, 09:57 PM
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#9
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Member Group: Members Posts: 41 Joined: 14-May 07 From: Southern Illinois Member No.: 130,831 |
Hey Trio3b! I am looking at downloading the ISO for VectorLinux 5.8 Standard. I'm looking at the download page for the OS and see an ISO file along with an MD5 file. What exactly is an MD5 file? Do I need to burn it along with the ISO. In the past I've simply burnt the ISO as an image.
What is an MD5 file for? No real luck with the Absolute distro. |
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Nov 29 2007, 11:55 PM
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#10
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 Bleeping Hacker Group: BC Advisor Posts: 2,029 Joined: 14-April 04 From: Texas Member No.: 151 |
The md5 hash is provided so you can compare your download and
verify that it is correct. If the md5 provided does not match the sum of the file you have then you most likely have a corrupt download. You can use Google to find an md5 program for Windows, Linux has it built in. From a command line type: md5sum 'download.iso' The result should match the hash provided with the download. -------------------- |
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Nov 30 2007, 03:59 PM
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#11
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Member Group: Members Posts: 41 Joined: 14-May 07 From: Southern Illinois Member No.: 130,831 |
Thanks raw. I appreciate it. We'll see how this works out here. I appreciate everyone's help so far.
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