Small Linux?

Could anyone point me towards a very small and compact Linux distribution? I need something which will work well on an old PC (p2 - 333MHz . 64MB Ram). I'm looking for something which isn't too resource hungry. I don't really mind if it doesn't have many features/goodies/ whatever. I just want one that runs smoothly and fast, without too much hassle.

Some friends suggested older distros of RedHat (6.x). Do you think that's a good option? Is there something which is designed primarily for lower end systems?

(And please don't say Knoppix. The whole concept sucks. runs)

Debian, i'd say. bit of a mission on your first go though..

hrm, ill think on this one.

Jeezus gwil, debian is well to hard for a newbie. ( presuming you've never used linux before, fraggard ? ).

' bbc linux ' is very good, so is ' damn small linux ', both come with blackbox, and are under 50 megs. but the install is a bit crappy. If you use dsl linux, that installs on old fat16 partititions ( keep in mind fat 16 must be a primary partition ), and therefore would be readable in windows.

www.distrowatch.com it has a very comprehensive list of linux distros, and of corse try www.linux.org click distributions and select minimalist, etc. And will come up with every distro in existance.

Good luck :smile:

Oooh, Debian seems to have too many advantages to miss. But everyone says it's tough to install... But the advantages seem to outweigh that. Any more info is much welcome and needed Gwil.

Thanks for the links xcon. I really liked distrowatch, and I think I'll opt for DSL or Slackware. They seem nice and easy to download and use. (And i'm pretty much a newbie. I've been working with it for only a month or so. Bah. )

Aye it is xconspirisist, its just my natural reaction to say "DEBIAN!" nowadays... heh :smile: if you do manage to get a box spare, give debian a whirl - it throws you in so deep at the bad end you have to force yourself to learn the hard way :smile:

but yeah, slack should be ok..

gwil - you ever tried bbc linux ? its a firey little beast for only 50 megs, fits on them mini cd things.

Just burning slackware 9.1 now, I sure hope it detects my mouse off the bat...

Knoppix-std is a live distro that boots strait from cd. Hella fun to experiment with. I always use it on the library computers.....stupid me just read the last of the post. THeres also damn small Linux. Seriously named that. Which is supposed to be very small.

another run off the cd one is LindowsCD (the lindowsOS on bootable cd) not sure where to get it tho ( i got it off a magazine cover cd)

Burning slackware at the moment. I'm trying for a linux install that fits on my 1.5 gig hard drive (with 256 megs for swap space) and of course my Red Hat install is a minimum 500 megs. Screw that.

Slackware apparently has a ZipSlack installation that fits in 100 megabytes and provides a fair amount of functionality. Dunno if it has X though.

What will you use the machine for Fraggard?

Nothing, really. I just want to run the machine on something different, and maybe muck around with some programming. Besides that, nothing at all.

hmm, pick distros at random then. Slack proved as crap as last time I tried it. im running fedora now, and I absolutely LOVE it. its hardware detection / gui is absolutly second to none.

I'm staying with DSL, I think. It's working superbly well. None of that laggi-page-flippi-ness that RedHat 7.2 caused, and no hassles on installation. Still haven't tried either Debian or slackware, maybe some time this week.

Oh, and By the way: Screw HL2, D3 and MaxPayne 2. XPacMan pwnz0r j00!

Tried tux racer, bztank, xsnake ?

America's Army? Quake III? Freeciv?

Well, I got Slackware installed, but it won't get on the network for some reason. ifconfig -a correctly shows both my network devices (eth0 and eth1) and the loopback device, and my eth0 occasionally manages to get an IP address that I'm sure is vallid (it matches the one I get under Windows). But every time I try to run links or konqueror, when I browse to www.google.com it gives a "host not found", and when I browse to an IP (216.109.125.65) it gives a "could not connect to host". Ideas? Also, I can ping myself, and modprobe 8139too doesn't return any errors.

Now I can't even get an IP. dhclient says it can't find a network device to work on, dhcpcd doesn't do anything when I run it. Ideas?

Its problerbly getting confused with your two network cards. Try disabling one, see if that works ( I dont know how, sorry ). Also, what setup do you have? If you use a router, it may be flipping at some settings, if you use a modem, it could be fliping too.

Yep, I pulled one of the network cards out and DHCP got an IP for the other one.