[Wolves] What can I run on this machine?

[Jono Bacon]

Hi Alex,

First and foremost...I suggest Debian (bet you couldnt
guess that!). I do choose it based on a few things
though (apart from the usual benefits of Debian):

 - You are gonna be best off compiling a kernel for
this machine to squeeze more power out of it. Debian
makes kernel compilation much easier.

 - Debian is more lightweight than a lot of distros
that bundle a load of crap onto the machine.

 - Debian has a veriety of lightweight window managers
in the apt repository. this will thereforemake trying
different software easier and picking the right apps
for the machine.

If I was to not choose Debian, I would select
Mandrake.

One suggestion: go to #wolveslug on IRC and there is
bound to be someone who can help when you cant get an
odd bit of Debian working.

  Jono


--- AlexG <ag004a3887@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I now have a rather old (~ 6 years) AMD K6-233
> machine, that I got back off my parents.  They
> decided that they liked it enough to buy a new one,
> so gave me the one I built for them back.  It has a
> couple of 1.2Gb HDD, an ATI All-In-Wonder-Pro PCI
> card, based on the Rage-2 chipset.  An ancient ISA
> sound card, that i don't think I have any drivers
> for, i think it will run on the old yamaha ones, but
> I'll need to just try it and see (for the price it
> might be worth replacing with a PCI one).  I've also
> added a network card.
> 
> What I want to know is, what version of Linux will
> run on this?  I tried vector Linux yesterday, and
> although I think I did everything OK, I just got a
> lot or error message when it tried to extract the
> files.  I have a copy of  Debian(1-7) but i couldn't
> get disk 1 to boot, this might have been my fault
> due to the way I burnt the disk.  (I'll download it
> again and run off another copy.)  I also have
> Mandrake 9.0/8.?, and possibly some older versions
> of Red Hat.  Any suggestions of which distro I
> should use (I suspect the answer will be Debian) ;) 
> And what should I install to get a system that runs
> at a resonable speed, with god functionality for day
> to day use?  I would like to have X-windows and a
> WM, but I don't want to stick to KDE as I think this
> is a little to heavy for it.  Is it worth putting on
> an older distro, and then updateing the Kernel, or
> is this a waste of effort when a 'vanilla' install
> will do?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Alex
> 

=====
Jono Bacon - http://jono.dyndns.org/
KDE Developer - Freelancer - Musician

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