all this chatting about linux, what can be done with a 200mhz machine?

Will Albers · 12-28-2005, 11:49 AM

I know this is an awful question and please dont rip my head off. I guess im just looking for someone to say "research SUSE x.x, it should be a good starting point". You get the idea.

I have an old 200mhz with 256 megs of ram. Probably have a few 6 gig hard drives laying about as well. My thought was using it to learn Linux and experiment with its musical/networking capabilities (thinking about playing my mp3 collections in other rooms, accessing the network, etc). I may even attempt a lil mobile apllication. Can anything be done with this old paper-weight? If so, what do you recommend i download and try out.

binary.h4x · 12-28-2005, 01:58 PM

My favorite is Debian. www.debian.org Although the install is a bit more involved. Mandrake is very good for beginners.
For a 200MHz machine, I would not recommend a graphical interface. You can boot straight to a command prompt really quickly and there are several command-line mp3 players.

If you really wanna see Linux at full potential, you can download something called a "live cd" and run it on your main (hopefully faster) PC. A live cd will boot linux from nothing but the cdrom, so no worrying about having to install to your harddisk.

tdb30_ · 12-28-2005, 02:19 PM

You could install a small distro like one of those 50MB ones. Then have it run in ram. It should be reasonably fast enough.

One thing that would help is adding a bunch of memory and running as much as you can in ram.

edikp · 12-28-2005, 02:39 PM

Maybe 'damn small linux' could get you started. Just google for it.

Don 944 LA · 12-28-2005, 03:05 PM

Try the Slax distros.

They have one thats called " Kill Bill" that runs fine on my 233.
It has KDE and Firefox etc ... al the basics and a great U/I.
I had to up the memory to at least 196mb for it to work properly with the GUI.

I believe that the 200mhz was still considered a Pentium, where the 233mhz MMX was considered a Pent II.

Give it a shot, if it don't work, eject the CD and reboot, nothin to loose.

good luck
Don
EDIT: there is also SLAX Popcorn, which is really really small and still has a GUI.

Will Albers · 12-29-2005, 08:44 AM

Thanks gents!

(for the advice and not ripping my head off

)

gnomad · 12-29-2005, 09:56 AM

Although a 200Mhz machine can do a lot of cool things using Linux, learning Linux isn't really one of them -- unless you like waiting!

See if you can't score a P3 or better machine (or dual-boot your Windows box) for learning, and then save the slower machine for deployment.

-g.

ibeni05 · 01-18-2006, 12:46 AM

Have you try amacdys? But I don't really know if it answers your question if you want to put it in a car...

its a bit outdated but try it if you want..

kraft · 01-23-2006, 12:36 PM

With a 200 Mhz you can do a lot

My first platform was built with a P 133 Mhz, 64 Mb of RAM and a 4 Gb Hdisk.
Kde is too heavy, you should better forget it but...there's a fast graphical environment which will help you at least to test, WindoMaker

I run on it Xmms and Xine but unfortunately the graphics card was a S3 with only 4 Mb which is really too low for video decoding and in overall the cpu will be too little to manage allright with the movies.

About the distro now it's up to you to chose the flavour you want, there's a lot of litterature on the internet as you know.

TheLlama · 01-23-2006, 02:16 PM

OT: Kraft, I would pay for a PC Badge that looked like your avatar. I need a Linux sticker for my laptop. Unfortunately, the only ones around a the square dome badges. I want one that mocks the WinXP sticker I razored off.

kraft · 01-23-2006, 04:02 PM

OT: Lol TheLlama just help yourself, i found this while searching things related to linux on the net, this one is not my creation.
Would be nice to find someone which is able to do a kind of resin inclusion of this logo, it could look then like the plastic epia's logo

polynoth · 02-05-2006, 04:31 AM

damn small linux is amazing on old hardware. if you have more than 128mb ram, the entire os can be loaded into ram. I have it running on an old server (100mhz w/128mb ram) , and all of the applications load faster than my 2.5ghz celeron w/ 512 mb ram with windows xp. (no, its not bloated with malware ) (I have a dual boot, windows for games and my girlfriend. debian for everything else) i would highly recommend damn small linux for your old computer, the installation process is easier than every other linux distro that i have installed, including ubuntu. installing damn small linux on your machine shouldn’t take too long, but it will be allot faster if you do it this way:
take an old hard drive, and temporarily put it into your newer pc. download a damn small linux live cd, burn the iso, (if your not familiar with burning iso images, google it, as you cannot just copy the files to cd in xp without special cd burning software) and do a frugal install in the old hard dive. if will tell you that you have to reboot, instead, power down and pop the old hard drive back into your old machine and boot. the instillation will finish. dsl is the best small distro that i have used, although it is tough to tailor to your needs. (removing applications, etc)if you really want to optimize your old hardware, go with linux from scratch. you could make your system really damn fast, and functional again, especially if you have one specific function in mind. (just a web browsing pc/ text editor/ music player, a file server, a carputer, or a home media center)

Kusuriya · 05-16-2006, 09:54 PM

200mhz eh.... well i heard the processor makes a GREAT drink coaster.. seriously you could prolly use something like DSL then the command line if you dont mind the bit of the wait you could prolly get X TWM or X and a bare bones interface.. but if you want to do anything serious.. you need more than that

Don 944 LA · 05-16-2006, 10:24 PM

I just fired up a 300mhz PII board today that would die under windows years ago.
Not my board, but one that a family member had tried to get the system fixed many many years ago. Well, I dug this thing out, put a dimm in it, connected a bad drive, and whooolah put DSL on it, works great !!!!

DSL ( Damn Small Linux ) is great for old boxes. It's the ONLY Linux distro that I have found that will run fast (like a P4) because it's been optimized.
They have also been working on a DSL2 type of thing, that has many other features from the get go..

ALSO, DSL runs fast on old boxes (Pentium 1 + ) and just runs on older (486 etc ..) NOT WITH COMMAND LINE, but with a desktop etc ... and a nice looking one too.

Something like Suse would be an absolut DOG, cuz it's way bloated.

Don

Kusuriya · 05-17-2006, 10:01 PM

don i say command line because its all in what you do with X... i ran DSL on a 1.33 GHZ machine and X would choke on its own cock every time soo its all a matter of what you do ;P

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