What distro to use to resurrect an old Thunderbird rig?

[randomizer]

I have an Athlon T-bird rig I'm trying to resurrect from being terribly slow to usable again. It's been running Windows XP for years with 448MB of RAM but one of the RAM slots has kicked the bucket so I'm down to 384MB now. I have run XP on it with 256MB but I'm sure you can imagine what fun that would be especially after using the same installation for 3 years straight. But I digress.

I am wondering if the newer versions of the common distributions would be too hefty for 384MB RAM and an 850MHz T-bird (it's degrading so I've toned down the overclock). I wouldn't be running KDE because it will probably suck up too much of the precious little RAM I have.

Full specs:

850MHz Athlon T-bird.
384MB PC133
9800 Pro 128MB (overkill to the max but I had a spare card lying around and it was better than the old GF2 MX400 that the PC already had )
Soundblaster Live! 16-bit. I think it's the platinum version.
ASUS A7V (VIA KT133 chipset)
160GB 7200RPM Samsung PATA drive

 

[linux_0]

Try Xubuntu and Fedora with XFCE and see how well it runs

If Xubuntu and Fedora XFCE are too slow try slax.

 

[randomizer]

Will do Never used Slax though.

 

[linux_0]

Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11 with Gnome run ok on a trashy Celeron 900 with 512MB RAM booting from SD. This is not ideal but it runs, so your 850MHz Athlon T-bird should run ok on XFCE which is faster and less demanding than Gnome or KDE.

A netbook spin of Fedora or Ubuntu should run ok too.

Debian is usually good for older machines but it can be a pain to setup.

Good luck

 

[Ijack]

Just to throw a spanner into the works, how about considering FreeBSD running the XFCE4 desktop. That should run pretty sweetly on that setup.

 

[Zorak]

Xubuntu served me well on an older laptop, but then again it was a P4 @ 2GHz, so I don't know how well Xubuntu will scale down from there. Also, you could just ditch the Desktop environments altogether and go with a lightweight window manager like one of the *Box (e.g. OpenBox, BlackBox, FluxBox) or FVWM. If you want to tear out even more bloat, you should go with debian, or if you are really adventurous (or you have a computer cluster at your disposal for compiling), you could go with Gentoo. I'd not recommend Gentoo on a machine that slow, though because compiling will take _FOREVER_. Arch Linux might be a good way to get the speed and flexibility of Gentoo without all the compiling.

--Zorak

 

[audiovoodoo]

Not sure quite what the status of the project is:

http://www.fluxbuntu.org/

 

[randomizer]

Ok no more suggestions of compiling Gentoo, I'm not really much good with Linux as is I wasn't even able to get Arch set up properly in a VM lol. I've never tried any *BSD OSs either. The system will mostly be used for running O so it doesn't need to be super snappy but anything should be better than running XP SP2 and waiting for 5 minutes before the system is barely usable.

I'm also trying Linux Mint because it doesn't really require any setup beyond disabling the Terminal Fortune quotes.

EDIT: Forgot to mention in the OP that it will be using a 160GB 7200RPM Samsung PATA drive

 

[audiovoodoo]

In that case I'd say http://www.xubuntu.org/ is probably your best bet. It's the same setup as Ubuntu so a snap to get up and running. I do like ijack's suggestion though.

 

[womble]

There are a few lightweight versions of PCLinuxOS too. Usually has a nice setup staight from install. Dabbled with other distros over the years and this is the one I've always seemed happiest with.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Ok no more suggestions of compiling Gentoo, I'm not really much good with Linux as is I wasn't even able to get Arch set up properly in a VM lol. I've never tried any *BSD OSs either. The system will mostly be used for running O so it doesn't need to be super snappy but anything should be better than running XP SP2 and waiting for 5 minutes before the system is barely usable.

I'm also trying Linux Mint because it doesn't really require any setup beyond disabling the Terminal Fortune quotes.

EDIT: Forgot to mention in the OP that it will be using a 160GB 7200RPM Samsung PATA drive

Heh, compiling much on an old 850 MHz T-bird would be a pretty darn slow process unless you use distcc to let your other machines help along with the process. I am currently running Gentoo on my X2 4200+ desktop and it takes a long time to compile things; I couldn't imagine how slow an 850 T-bird would be. I personally like Debian (running Gentoo on my desktop for a specific reason) and Debian Lenny XFCE would run very nicely on your machine.

 

[randomizer]

Well this PC has no Ethernet capabilities and only USB1.1 for an 802.11g NIC (I don't have a PCI card for it) so I can't imagine that I'd get enough network throughput to help with the compiling that much.

 

[audiovoodoo]

You could compile on your good machine and copy it over, just a question of setting the right flags and some pen drive action.

 

[randomizer]

Googling time I guess

 

[linux_0]

Fedora XFCE and Xubuntu should take about 20-60min to install.

If you have to compile everything it could take 3 weeks

 

[amdfangirl]

Well this PC has no Ethernet capabilities and only USB1.1 for an 802.11g NIC (I don't have a PCI card for it) so I can't imagine that I'd get enough network throughput to help with the compiling that much.

Want my NIC?

I'll give it for free if you want it, just gotta find it first.

 

[randomizer]

I actually got rid of an old 10/100 card recently, didn't think I'd need it now that everything is integrated 100/1000. I was wrong...

 

[amdfangirl]

I have a gigabit Intel NIC but that's for me /evil

 

[Zorak]

Fedora XFCE and Xubuntu should take about 20-60min to install.

If you have to compile everything it could take 3 weeks

Nah. He could probably do it in anywhere between a week and 4 days Really though, when I was setting up Gentoo, I'd say the reason why it took me as long as it did was because I'd never configured a Kernel before and so I had to look up a boatload of things about my hardware and I read all of the different bells and whistles that you could compile in. The actual compiling time in total was probably about half a day, but then again I have a quad core machine and I was able to enable parallel compilation options in GCC which helps things along a bit. But yeah, if he had a compile farm at his disposal things could go MUCH faster

Anyways, it sounds like he has already made his decision for the most part. I'd say Xubuntu or Fluxbuntu will probably serve that machine well, and if it doesn't, he can go to something smaller like DSL or Puppy Linux and add extras from there.

--Zorak

 

[linux_0]

It depends on how many packages you're compiling and your hardware

I was guessing / kidding / exaggerating a bit ( thus the ), but it's all very relative.

If you're only compiling the kernel and a couple of other major components then it will probably take a few hours on modern hardware.

If you try to compile 10,000 packages it will take a long while, even if you have a small compile farm.

You might think 10,000 is a large number but in fact it's not that large, Fedora offers about 8,000 pre-compiled packages and Debian about 25,000 and several other distros offer 10,000 or more pre-compiled packages. If you try to compile that many packages from source it will take quite some time, even if you have a lot of hardware at your disposal.

So it depends on how low-level you want to get with Gentoo or LFS and other factors.

 

[randomizer]

Well it would be a "fun" project in my spare time. But like Zorak, I've never configured a kernel so I'd spend alot longer researching how to do it that actually doing it. Hopefully the compilers can use as many threads as possible

 

[linux_0]

Yeah, it would be fun to do it some day and it would be a good educational experience for sure but this isn't something most users should attempt.

If enough people decided to compile Linux from source they'd crash the power grid in their respective countries.

gcc will use 100% of your CPU cores for hours on end while doing this. The thermal stress alone could kill your computer if it's not up to it ( you absolutely have to have good airflow and AC for proper cooling ).

 

[randomizer]

Good airflow? Nope. A/C? Nope. Looks like I'm out of luck Well I am not one for being afraid of a bit of CPU heat, given I took my E6600 up to 70C idle temps once :lol: I'll undervolt my i7 920 and see if it can handle it, I know it exceeds 80C while encoding video with relatively cool ambient temps of under 24C.

 

[linux_0]

gcc is so good at stressing the CPU and every other component in your computer that many computer companies and hardcore geeks use it to burn in their computers to test them for stability ( similar to the way prime95 works but much worse ).

If you push the CPU to 100% utilization and all your other parts for a couple of weeks straight it's very likely that any subpar components in your system will fail, possibly catastrophically.

gcc doesn't just kill the CPU, it pounds your memory, chipset, hard drive and everything else into the ground and just about every individual electronic component on those devices as well.

If your voltage regulators are not properly cooled their built-in thermal shutdown protection circuitry might kick in and your computer could power down or catch fire and your caps could explode, especially if they are bootleg or low quality caps.

Really terrible things can happen if you push the components to their temperature limit for a certain period of time.

 

[randomizer]

That's why things have warranties. If a component can't handle consistently high loads then it isn't up to standard. Although I don't really want to pound my hard drive, being mechanical even if it is functioning fine the wear and tear is just being accelerated by overuse.

I really need a new case with some decent fans. The only fan 120mm I have is my PSU fan and I only have a 92mm and 80mm case fans, both of which don't push a great deal of air.