AMD k6 + 32mb EDO ram

What would be the best desktop environment i could get?
I need to browse on the internet (single tab is fine), and do some html/css.
Really basic stuff, but I need it too run as fast as possible on this configuration.
I tried xubuntu and it was really slow. Maybe i could disable some things?

(yes, those computer still exist... It's my computer at work )

 

And I thought my old Pentium III with 128MB of RAM was slow

Damn Small Linux (DSL) may be worth a try--it ran very smoothly on the above system, and should be able to run on as little as 16MB of RAM.

 

Your specs are marginal even for a command line install:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD

You're going to have an issue with any desktop. Gnome or XFCE really require 512MB of RAM and even lightweight window managers really should have 128MB. You can try something like IceWM, I suppose, but don't expect much.

So what's it like working back in the year 1997?

 

Ow... I'll try to get my hands one some 128mb ram or something... I think I can put two dimms, I'll look again tomorrow and try to salvage dead pc's for ram.

really great
In fact, I brought my Hp mini110 today, and my boss told me "put that thing away, someone will steal it". I used it anyways, and someone tried to steal, like he said. Ow, what a joy to work in a poor neighborhood

 

Yes command line install would be the easiest which might work.

But there are other distros which are meant especially for these PCs:
1. Damn Small Linux (DSL)
2. Lubuntu or any other LXDE based distro (but beware of Lubuntu - I've heard reviews that althought it is lighter than Ubuntu it aint way too lightweight)
3. BasicLinux (aka BasLin aka BL3) - provides IceWM option which is not bad and known to run on systems with 3 MB of RAM

There should be couple of others as well but these are the ones which came to my mind immediately

GUIs running DMs other than gnome, kde, xfce should be pretty lightweight afaik.

 

Check out SliTaz, 30MB and runs in RAM.

SliTaz GNU/Linux (en)

 

Requires 192 MB of RAM.

 

Damn Small Linux hasn't been maintained since 2008! It's pretty much dead.

LXDE isn't truly lightweight but not quite full featured.

Ancient, and I do mean ancient. From 1999, by the look of things.

Not 32MB lightweight.

Probably not a bad idea. I've maxed out the RAM on older PCs and come up with something workable. It does get to be a little tricky compared to modern PCs, since there used to a distinction between high and low density RAM.

If you can get 128mb of RAM, you could use Puppy Linux, which is perhaps the most foolproof lightweight distro I've ever seen. I'd try Wary 5.1.2, not 5.2.5. Like Slitaz, it runs in RAM, so it's quick once it's loaded. The nice thing about Puppy is that it has a very active developer base.

Now that is a tough neighborhood.

 

Unfortunately you would have the tradeoff between uptodate software and using older/legacy hardware - just as the tradeoff between size and speed. Newer algorithms and optimizations are utilized to take advantage of recent hardware - that has been always how technology has progressed and made an user upgrade his/her PC at least once in 10 years.

Unlike mechanical devices which have wear and tear and lose their life after some time, electronic devices tend to get outdated because of lack of support for older devices over time.

Yes you're right LXDE lacks many features but my first paragraph should answer why.

You're wrong about the 128MB minimum required for a desktop - I had my Pentium 120 MHz CPU with 64 MB of RAM during the early 2000s which was running Red Hat Linux 7 with KDE UI. Although it didnt have the bells and whistles of today's desktop - I found it pretty much usable for browsing the internet, checking my emails and for practicing my C

 

I still have a K6/2 running fine with Debian LXDE. However, I think for your PC this would already be too heavy.
Install a Debian base sytem only. If you're fine with a text browser just install lynx or elinks on top of that. If you need a GUI install an x-server and icewm (no DE, no login manager). As for browsers try chromium and midori. I don't know which one will be lighter. Kazehakase might be even lighter, but it lacks some functionality.
If you only need a browser and no other applications you can even spare icewm and start the browser directly. This is essentially what webconverger [1] does, but unfortunately it comes with a i686 kernel which your hardware doesn't support. Theoretically it should work to replace the i686 kernel with a i486 kernel but I've never tried that practically.
Giving BSD a chance might also be an otion. Afaik the BSD kernels are even more lightweight than the Linux kernel. To keep it easy you could try to set up the above system with Debian/kFreeBSD instead of Debian/Linux but you could as well try to set up another BSD system.

DSL is very much outdated, so don't use it for security reasons! Slitaz needs only a small portion of disc space but that is because it's stored in compressed form. You won't want a K6 unpack that for every session. Xubuntu is simply bloated, so no option for your system.

[1] DistroWatch.com: Webconverger

 

The k6 is the original i686, so it should work with an i686 kernel

 

No, it's not. The K6 was a Pentium I MMX competitor, so it supported the i586 instruction set.
The K6/ 2 was meant to be a Pentium II competitor and should therefore have been i686 compatible. But it lacked the cmov instruction and is therefore not i686 compatible. A i686 Debian kernel doesn't work on my K6/2 for that reason, so I have to use the i486 kernel. The K6/ 2+ respectively K6/3 was AMD's first fullly i686 compatible CPU.

 

Dsl works with 64mb ram. Thanks guys. By the way i just got "promoted" to p4 with 1.5gb ram so every thing runs fine now.

 

Again, I don't suggest running an unsupported, out-of-date distro for security reasons. As far as you upgraded computer, you should have a problem with mainstream distros.

 

Just because it is outdated doesnt mean it would have security issues - distros like RHEL, CentOS hae outdated versions of packages but quite stable and they utmost release only security updates.

Yes this might not be totally true for DSL but at least he can have a smooth working setup as long as he is careful with what he does on the machine.

 

In this case I agree totally with linuxwanabe. Dsl is a time bomb in terms of security. Its browser dillo alone has lots of security problems. One can't even trust its SSL implementation.
Since Dsl hasn't received any security updates for over 2 years one can't compare that to distros like RHEL.

If you really want something as lightweight as Dsl, go for Tinycore and install the additional packages you need!

 

Yes Tinycore has low RAM requirements less than 48MB for the default install (not sure of the CPU though). But again if you start installing packages the requirements would get higher.

Yes I too agree about the default browser dillo in DSL, you should try some alternate browsers for better security.

 

Last time I checked they had Opera in their repos which my K6/2 handled easily. Sure this computer is still one magnitude above what the TO has but I think my machine still gets closer to that than what most others in this thread have.

Which in turn means that Dsl's requirements will raise. So I see no benefit in using it over Tinycore.
Besides, can one even run a current browser on top of gtk+ 1.2? I think I remember having heard of mayor trouble doing that. The next thing would be to upgrade openssl to get at least a half-way secure system. I don't think it's worth it.

 

I think ubuntu dropped 586 support at 10.10. Not like you'd want to run that anyway. DSL, tinycore, arch, or even a minimal debian install should be okayish.

I used to run debian on a 486 as a proxy and irc box. It obviously had EDO RAM, and not much of it (may have been 16MB). It's not impossible, just will have limited utility for anything that's not purely text-based (lynx, irc, text email, etc).

The main problem is the power consumption for the performance you get. Completely horrible tradeoff if you're paying that bill. Otherwise, I guess it's good fur Lulz.

 

I'm currently overhauling an old P3-450 laptop with 128mb ram and getting any current distro to even smoothly work has been a chore. I finally settled on AntiX and it seems to work good, although web browsing is barely useable/enjoyable. Antix is booting up and sitting at 36mb with the default services and wireless running.

 

tinycore ftw!