Linux for low spec PC

frost

Hi
I am about to acquire a bunch of thrown away PCs, I think they're probably early Pentiums, with little memory (not sure if its 32 or 64) and small HD (1 gig probably)

I want to set these up for a few non-technical people who want to do basic Word processing, spreadsheets, internet access, etc, nothing fancy.

Would prefer to go with some flavour of Linux & open source apps. I have Suse 8 on my home PC (P2 350 Mhz 64meg) and although I like it, the windowing environments is slower than M$ -- I've tried KDE and Gnome.

Are there other Linux windowing environments suitable for very low spec PCs? The people getting these PCs aren't technical, so a graphical environment is preferred over a command line prompt!

thanks for any suggestions or advice

leeroybrown

I use Fluxbox. It's an excellent light weight window manager and would suit a low end machine but it doesn't have any of the eye candy of KDE or Gnome. You seem to want a light weight desktop environment.

Off the top of my head you could try ICEWM.

Your main problem I see you having is the lack of RAM - Desktop Environments and modern apps chew this up regardless of the OS. You could try a 2.6 kernel as it has kernel pre-emption support which will improve foreground windowing performance (especially with heavier weight window managers).

frost

Originally posted by leeroybrown
I use Fluxbox. It's an excellent light weight window manager and would suit a low end machine but it doesn't have any of the eye candy of KDE or Gnome. You seem to want a light weight desktop environment.

Off the top of my head you could try ICEWM.

Your main problem I see you having is the lack of RAM - Desktop Environments and modern apps chew this up regardless of the OS. You could try a 2.6 kernel as it has kernel pre-emption support which will improve foreground windowing performance (especially with heavier weight window managers).

LB,
What's the difference between a Window Manager and a Desktop environment? Do I need both?
Thanx

leeroybrown

Essentially a Window Manager controls the display, positioning, resizing, appearance of the individual applications in windows on the screen. They generally have right click menu's and are pretty simple.

A Desktop Environment generaslly adds a featured task bar, menu and all the other stuff you get with KDE and Gnome. Desktop Environments generally act as a Window Manager.

Window Managers are always lighter weight and sometimes have some of the features of the Desktop Environments. You don't need a Desktop Environment but they generally make life easier for people who want to avoid terminals.

As I said, I use Fluxbos. This gives me multiple taskbars, a simple taskbar showing the windows open, a right click menu for all my apps. Oh, and of course, snazzy theme and wallpaper. On machines that old you may need to go for something very light for performance reasons.

Red Alert

FluxBox sounds good alright - i've only ever used IceWM but it's blindingly fast. If you're setting up a few Pc's you might want to look at something like the BpBatch remote boot processor as well (once you've got the basic setup going) as this would let you distribute any changes you make to the config to all the PC;s.

Dar

I'm running slackware on an old pentium laptop.

Fluxbox for wm, opera for browsing, abiword for word processing. Opera & abiword both have the standard windows gui and should be no problem for non-techies.

Does the job no bother.

nadir

I second fluxbox, there are a few of us here who swear by it.
desktop ww)

frost

Ok, fluxbox seems to be my man.
Any strong recommendations as to distributions?
Could I use any and just minimise it or is it easier to do that with, say, Slackware, rather than Suse (which I have).

cianc_old

Depends on how you feel about source based distributions, but if you're trying to squeeze all the performance you can from low end machines then Gentoo is probably your best bet.
Cian

nadir

I guess for a minimalistic install, you will probably be thinking of gentoo as mentioned above, debian or slackware. I use gentoo myself, very nice distro, great user friendly documentation and good problem solving forums

frost

Thanks for the links. I just had a look at Gentoo, and it says you need 64meg if you use a prebuilt install and a lot more if you want to compile the sources. As some of these PCs only have 32 meg is there a way around this?

Thanks

niallb

Give Vector Linux a shot.
It's based on slackware, but is ready to roll on the kind of machines you're getting.
It's as easy an install as you're going to get and has a set of applications tailored to low spec machines.
This will be a lot easier for you than stripping down another distribution.
I thought it was mentioned here before, but it must have been another thread.

NiallB