[Tfug] Small Linux Distributions (was Re: Religious crap)

[Ammon Lauritzen]

Tim Ottinger wrote:
> I used puppy for a while, didn't have to install dos first.  Seemed great.
> DSL is smaller, I understand.  I'm running Debian with XFCE4 on a 450MHz,
> 192MB machine just fine.

On lower-end machines, the ram makes an enormous difference when it
comes to being able to live with an X setup because if you get too low
on the memory tree, you start swapping out... which hoses older boxen.

It is generally my experience that 128mb/300mhz is about the lowest end
i386 you want to try an X setup on, and then I wouldn't recommend
anything fancy by way of window managers.

A 330mhz ppc with 96mb of ram is unusable under X. Well, I lie. It is
usable. But only if you're not doing anything fancier than xterms and
the odd firefox window.

As far as Keith's 500mhz/256mb amd? I worked for three years (in the not
terribly distant past) on a 450mhz/256mb celeron and was very happy with
life as long as I wasn't constantly recompiling things or working in
Java :) I ran both Debian and Slackware on it and didn't have any issues
with installation.

But of course, I was using fluxbox for my WM - something like a 3mb
footprint as compared to a typical Gnome/KDE session taking closer to
30-50mb.

I'm not too big a fan of the "off brand" distributions, but then again I
don't have enough experience with them to make any specific judgements.

For a lightweight install, my recommendations are generally Gentoo and
Slackware for reasons of their control/pain ratios, but both can be
fairly long installs (actually, nothing beats a stage 1 Gentoo install
on a p2 class machine... *twitch*). Slack might install a few more
things than you want, but we're not talking server apps like some distros...

Ammon