[Wolves] Linux on an old PC

[Kevanf1]

On 5/3/05, Adam Sweet <drinky76 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Kevanf1 <kevanf1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Has anybody succesfully run SuSe 9.2 on an old PC?
> > It's not for me
> > but somebody asked me  if it were possible?  They
> > have tried using a
> > PC running 196mb of RAM together with a 166 Pentium
> > MMX chip.  The PC
> > hangs so far into the install and goes no further.
> > I'm pretty sure
> > 9.2 ought to run on a 166 but maybe not.  Or could
> > it be something
> > else preventing it?  I've got an old PC with a 166
> > MMX myself and had
> > thought of running SuSE on this.  Perhaps it's not a
> > good idea?  This
> > chap has run other distros succesfully on this
> > particular PC by the
> > way so it's not the Machinery that's actually
> > broken....perhaps not
> > quite up to the job.
> 
> Most of the weight will be in the windowing
> environment. X, your desktop environment/window
> manager and the apps you choose.
> 
> Theoretically it should be do-able with a light weight
> window manager like XFCE (or one of the other million)
> and office apps like Abiword. You could at least try.
> KDE, Gnome and OpenOffice.org would probably be too
> painful.
> 
> Would be interesting to hear how you get on. You could
> try to run a thin client too, run your apps on a
> powerful machine and display them on your old box but
> is it worth the aggro to learn how to do it?
> 
> The memory is probably ok but the processor speed
> would be the hold up when doing stuff. If you wanted a
> plain old console login then you would be fine to run
> Apache, MySQL and other such services, in fact it
> would make a great home server if you wanted to do
> that.
> 
> If you get it up, let me know how it fares. Have a
> look at the Morphix Light GUI or Damn Small Linux live
> CDs to see how light is usable.
> 
> Why that particular machine won't install SuSE, well
> who knows. Often in an installation routine, they
> provide a virtual console (F2 or F3 etc) so you can
> see what is going on.
> 
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> 
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> 
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Hi guys.  Sorry this one isn't my PC.  I might be trying it myself in
a few months but I have loads of stuff before that to get done around
the house.  This particular installation is on an acquaintances PC -he
is in Germany.  What I'm puzzled by is the fact that he is actually
trying to get it running purely as a text/command line interface.  He
is not bothered about setting it up with memory hogging graphical
interfaces, not even a lite one like ICE.  To be honest I fell that it
is perhpas not the CPU or memory but something else not meshing
correctly with the SuSE installation.  He's managed to get other
distro's up and running with GUI's like KDE so it will run with a GUI.

Puzzling, very puzzling.

-- 
Take care.
Kevan Farmer

34 Hill Street
Cheslyn Hay
Staffordshire
WS6 7HR