What version of LINUX do i use...

[brianvander]

I have an older laptop: 98 MICRON TREK2, P2 266(?); 8.4G HD, 64M Ram, no internal NIC or Modem...

It came with Win98, but I recently tried XP Home, which it did not like... and I been told now to use LINUX, but in reveiwing the RED HAT site, there seems to be a number a versions and i dont know which one to work with...

The intention is to place in the kitchen to access Internet and for kids games...

Can someone guide me what to use.

thansk
BV

[faulkner132]

Read the sticky post on Linux advice for new users.
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=140715

[Computer Hobbyist]

Originally Posted by brianvander I have an older laptop: 98 MICRON TREK2, P2 266(?); 8.4G HD, 64M Ram, no internal NIC or Modem... It came with Win98, but I recently tried XP Home, which it did not like... and I been told now to use LINUX, but in reveiwing the RED HAT site, there seems to be a number a versions and i dont know which one to work with... The intention is to place in the kitchen to access Internet and for kids games... Can someone guide me what to use. thansk BV

Given your limited equipment you will have a bad experience with any current version of linux using either Gnome or KDE. Do yourself and your kids a favor. Up the ram by a couple of factors and improve the processor.

The best rule of thumb is that a modern version of linux will run on any machine that will run windows 2000. If your machine would puke on Windows 2000, it won't do well with any of the current desktop distributions of linux. Now if you don't want to use a graphical interface, any version of linux will run on your system. Of course, you do want to run a graphical interface so you need more horse power.

[Josh1964]

Unless you can add more memory, I would forgo Linux, unless you can find a distro made for minimal resource installs. Linux uses memory differently than Windows, Linux will fill memory completely with apps waiting to be used, whereas Windows will only load the core os files and wait for you to choose what apps to load into memory. For this reason alone I feel a limited resource system should run Windows. Too, if you wanted to learn a bit and try your hand at a real-time os, QNX is cool. QNX should run pretty quickly on a system such as yours as it is designed for embedded systems so is very small of footprint. Other than that I would run 2k, and disable all services I would not need.

[faulkner132]

Damn Small Linux is designed for older hardware.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

It can run on a machine with as little as 16 MB. It will most likely load and operate significantly faster than a well trimmed 2000 machine simply because it doesn't come with all the stuff you would never use anyway.

[mikeL]

I would check out Damn small linux, as Faulkner stated or maybe Slackware. You will have problems running a GUI like KDE, or Gnome. You could always stick with a command line interface, or try fluxbox or blackbox, or one of the other small footprint GUI's.

[Floppyman]

Without a GUI, slackware will run great on that box. I've run it on PII 233's with 64MB ram no problem. THH

[glc]

Kids games? Put 98 back on it.

[dragonxx4]

Another good one to look at is Vector Linux. It is based on slackware and is made for older systems.

[jglen490]

I had an older IBM TP365XD (P120/72MB/3.2GB) some time ago. I installed Mandrake 8.2 and then later 9.2, but it struggled with KDE. I started using XFCE and then IceWM as graphical interfaces. Both XFCE (a small GUI) and IceWM (a very good lightweight window manager) worked very well. It ran a lot of fairly heavy apps such as OpenOffice.org, but was operating at its upper limits. I found that when I went from the 40MB that came with the machine to 72MB, the stability increased dramatically.

I think your P2 will run must any modern distro, but you really need to max out the RAM on that machine. You can run satisfactorily with IceWM, XFCE, or most any of the light weight window managers. While there are some games that run under Linux, you'll need to check the availability to be sure that they will meet your overall needs. Other than that, the system should be a candidate for renewed life under Linux.