OT - which distro?

[Fyron]

Minimal Debian/Ubuntu with Openbox for a WM is quite snappy on old hardware, and maintains the "ease of use" of Debian/Ubuntu (unlike a number of the "minimalist" distros that are definitely made with a hacker mentality...). CLI only is not very useful for a non-server box.

[Spoo]

I don't think you can install Ubuntu with only 32 MB of RAM.

[tp555]

I'd go with puppy linux.I have used it.When you exit you can save your config in a single file,256 or 512 mb.With 32 mb of ram its gonna be slow.Installing puppy to hd would help but you have to repartition or totally wipe hd and install as the only os.What you need is more ram,but that could be more of a problem to deal with.

[dogscoff]

Thanks for the advice. I will definitely look into that lightweight Ubuntu Fyron mentioned. It will be either that or DSL that goes onto my old toshiba P1/32 meg laptop. Puppy looks nice but I'm not sure it will run happily on such a low-spec machine, even installed to HD (reformatting the drive is not an issue: I have no reason to keep Windoze on this machine.)

My current laptop (Sony p3 1400/ 128meg) will eventually go with whatever distro ends up on the Tosh. Easier to maintain them both if they are the same. The Viao ran the DSL live CD beautifully. Unfortunately I can't just go ahead and install on that one straight away because the wife uses it a lot and she will resent the transition to something new and different. Therefore I am not putting a new OS in front of her until I've ironed out any teething problems and am in a position to answer all her queries immediately. Dual boot would be a good compromise, except I don't really have the HD space free for it.

However, if I can re-house her onto the little Tosh or a refurbed Dell she might be getting soon, so that we each have a PC of our own, then I can do whatever I like to the Sony=-)

I used to use Lynx way back in the day at uni, and even now I consider PINE the best damn email client I've ever used, so I'm not afraid of CLI-only apps and systems. However I wouldn't have much use for a non-GUI machine.
Maybe I'm just a spoiled Windows-generation brat, but I want an environment that is nice to look at as well as functional, that displays graphics and video, and I rather like the idea of controlling things by point-and-click rather than memorising and typing in countless commands and their parameters. There's a reason the world moved to WIMP-systems.

Besides, in my mind whatever Linux I install should look at least as advanced as the Windows it replaces (except for special cases like servers, where a CLI would probably do just fine), or there's no point. To go from win98 to a CLI-only environment would feel as though installing Linux is a step backwards, not forwards.

In other news, I will get a good chance to play with Linux installation this week. Yesterday I lent my Ubuntu live CD to my Dad for him to play with and (thanks largely to all the beers he'd just had the pub=-) he managed to click the "install Ubunutu" button, repartition his hard drive and wipe Windows off altogether. He now has a beautifully running Ubuntu laptop (An Evesham.co.uk Quest something or other- REALLY nice machine), but he's lost his Outlook email history and address book, and probably a load of other data as well. Luckily his most important stuff *was* backed up.

So now I have to try to recover whatever lost data I can (anyone recommend a good file recovery proggy for Ubuntu?) and put Windows XP back on for him. I'll be installing Ubuntu as a dual-boot option=-)

[dogscoff]

Just an update for anyone who cares:

My house is now Windows-free[1]! Yay me!

My wife did get a refurbed Dell for her birthday, a 510m, which is running Ubuntu very nicely indeed, thankyou very much. She *****es about it from time to time because it's not what she's used to, but that seems to be diminishing as time goes on. I think she quite likes it really, but just won't admit it=-)

That meant I was free to do whatever I liked to the Viao, which in the end was an install of Xubuntu (this machine isn't quite up to spec for full Ubuntu, imho). I'm really liking Xubuntu, maybe even more than the full thing. Anyway, it runs thunderbird and firefox and wesnoth, so I'm happy=-)

[1] Actually, not quite: The knackered old Toshiba is still in a box in the attic with Win98 installed. I'm tempted to dig it out and put Damn Small Linux just to get rid of this footnote, but the truth is I don't think I can be bothered.

And how will I run Space Empires? Well, I have this rather shiny Dell desktop running XP on my desk at work, and I'm allowed to play games in my lunch hour=-) Does SE5 run on Vista? Maybe we should be bugging Aaron to work on a Linux version rather than maiking it Vista-happy. After all, the Linux gaming scene is considerably smaller than the Windows one, so a high-quality commercial game like SE5 arriving on the platform might get a bit more attention than for Windows, and cause a bit more of a stir. Especially now he's gotten most of the killer bugs out of it.

My next project: Buy a knackered laptop from ebay and cannibalise it to fix the broken hinge on my Vaio. And maybe put a bigger hard drive in there while I've got it in pieces.

Oh, and learn programming. I'm thinking Python.

[Fyron]

SE5 runs fine on Vista.

[Baron Munchausen]

So please detail the specs of the machines and which distros are running on them. I'm curious what you found most workable for each level of hardware. Does DSL come with usable office software (more than just a bare text editor) and does it have dialup capability? I have an old socket 7 (original Pentium) machine with an internal modem (no network) and 256 MB of RAM and have been testing larger distros on it. They are very slow to install. But I want reasonably complete features. So I haven't tried DSL or Puppy Linux yet.

[dogscoff]

Baron, I will eventually be posting a webpage detailing exactly what I did and how, so that other potential Linux users with similar hardware can see what's possible. The link will be http://www.dogscoff.co.uk/linux but I don't have anything up there just yet.

In the end I went for Full Ubuntu 7.04 on the Dell Inspiron 510m (just google for specs). It installed fine, picked up all the hardware, no further tweaking required whatsoever. It even runs the desktop effects nicely.

The machine that's making things interesting is a battered-but-functioning Sony Vaio fx701. Specs here. It's a good little machine, designed to run WinXP home which it did, well enough, for some five or six years.

Anyway, I installed Xubuntu on the Sony from the alternate install CD. Full Ubuntu was just too much for it. Xubuntu's install picked up all the hardware without any hassle at all, including the Sitecom WN PCC 01 wireless network card in the PCMCIA slot, so I was online straight away. I've removed abiword and installed openoffice and everything seems to run just fine. Admittedly, all I've used it for so far is browsing, viewing photos, checking email and playing Wesnoth. However the hardware seems to be entirely up to the job. Oh, I also had a quick play with LinCity, which seemed to be a little bit laggy, but I have a suspicion it runs like that on most computers.

There have been a few niggling things to sort out, some of them my own fault, I'm sure (keyboard mappings, transferring emails, that kind of stuff) which will be documented in full on my website.

I haven't played with Puppy or DSL yet, I'm afraid. They both seem to offer day-to-day use desktop systems though. Take a look at their websites for screenshots and software lists:

http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1 (hit 'refresh' if it comes up with "page not found."

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

I'm tempted to spend £10 on a USB memory stick and put Puppy on there, just so I can play with it. If I do, I will report back. I don't think I'll be using DSL unless I do one day decide to unmothball my old Toshiba.

Is your machine home-built/custom built or is factory built? What exactly are the specs?