Mepis On An Old Box...

My dad has an old Dell paperweight running Windows 98 that he uses for work. He may be getting a new comp soon, so I'm considering possibly getting it and installing MEPIS on it. The processor is only a 433 MHz Celeron, and the hard drive is only six gigs, but the RAM is something like 310 megabytes, so I could possibly use it for testing Java software I write in Windows. So, I'm curious: does anyone have similar setups running MEPIS (or any Linux distro for that matter), and if so, what does it run like?

 

Any help is appreciated.

Untill recently, i had a system with Pentium2 266mhz 128 megs ram, 1Gig hard disk.It ran KDE desktop fine with a litle delay in reatiion time, but very usable.So that system should run any up to date Distro fine.I may be tempted to run GNOME or some other lighter weight Desktop Environment than KDE though.

I agree with that, except one small detail.

It ran KDE desktop fine with a litle delay in reatiion time, but very usable.

A also used Linux on an old computer (a 100 MHz pentium with only 1 gig disk). It was slow but usable.However, be careful with the graphic adapter. Most of recent Linux distros use a version of X-Windows which supposes that you have a "normal" graphic adapter, with at leat 32 or 64 Megs memory.
If your graphic adapter is really old, maybe you will have to also use an old version of Linux.
Regards
Yordan

If your graphic adapter is really old, maybe you will have to also use an old version of Linux.

what version of X-Windows ???

Both versins i know of (Xorg and XFree) will both use the VESA driver if they cant detect a specific driver.

The card i used was a 4meg PCI card by ATI. a very very old one !

Even with very old computers, i would stll recomend an up to date distro (for the security / bug fixes)

just make sure the eye candy is off, and no un-needed services are running by default.

Last time i looked, even the newer fedora distro's still come compiled and optimised compatable with the old i386 processors.

unless you have a super old i286 that you stole from a dinosaur museum, i think you will be okay.

(your 433 megahurts celleron is an i686)

However if Yordan turns out to be correct, it only takes a second or 2 to switch X over to the VESA drivers.

it's not Megahurts (pun intended). Anyways, I would recommend Damn Small Linux because your system isn't really good with memory hogging Linux distribution. KDE is almost like the Windows XP API. GNOME is worst, it's slower.xboxrulz

Yeah, heard of DSM...actually, I found a version of MEPIS called MEPISLite, that's been modified a bit for use on older machines.

I have Debian 3.1 running on a Pentium-S 133MHz machine with 64MB RAM. I use it to store my videos and music and play them. Works just fine for me. A 466Mhz Celeron, but, as it is a Dell, some funny hardware you have may not work (mainly soundcard and modem). I wouldn't worry about your graphics card. There is always the VESA framebuffer, although my Trident PCI card with 2MB RAM is actually supported by Xorg/Xfree86. As long as you've got at least a 486, you should be fine. And a lot of people in here I've noticed seem to think 4MB RAM on a video card is old...I'm holding a 1 MHz MOS 6502 processor in my hand as I type this. And I don't even really consider that old. It's not old unless it has vacuum tubes.