[Techtalk] Question on distro....

Caitlyn Martin caitlynmaire at earthlink.net
Mon Feb 25 18:46:15 EST 2002


Hi, Megan, and everyone else,
> 
> This box is a P120, 1.2gig HD, 32meg RAM, so size matters somewhat.
> Smallest major to put on it that I've found is actually FreeBSD, but
> I'm suspecting that for coursework I'll make myself fewer headaches if
> I stay with linux.

Since you don't want Red Hat 7.2 (on my old Libretto 50CT and working
fine), I'd agree with the recommendation for Slackware.  It's not
terribly user friendly, though, but is way configurable and easy to keep
small.  I think you could easily get a minimal SuSe install into that
system and that would be a bit more user friendly.  

The key is to avoid KDE.  KDE 2.x and 3.0 are just way too resource
intensive for systems like this.  Heck, Gnome 1.4 is a bit too heavy for
that as well, IMHO, though it would work a lot better than KDE.  I
haven't played with the latest SuSe, but if it lets you go without Gnome
or KDE and use a lightweight WM from the start (i.e.: IceWM, XFCE,
AfterStep, etc...) it would be a really good choice.

Ones to avoid:  Caldera and Mandrake.  Not for lightweight systems, and
not easy to strip down at install time.  Besides, their GUI
configuration tools would grind your little system to a halt.  This is
one area where Red Hat's custom installation really does get it right.

All the best,
Caity



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