Wanted: a good linux for an old rig

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Can anyone recommend a Linux distro for an older rig?
(Or somewhere I can look to find info?)

It's my toy computer from my A+ days, and I'd like to set it up as a second family work-horse machine. It uses a 1.7GHz Athlon, has 512MB of RAM (iirc) along with some basic peripherals (CD RW drive, etc.)

It ran on XP Home before, but the little indy shop I bought it from didn't bother to give me a Windows disc. So I sacrificed XP in the name of study (unless I can find a suitable Windows disc to reinstall, that it - the license key is still on the side of the machine).

So... I'm thinking Linux'd be good. It's light, it's fun. It's been a while, and I'm starting to miss that penguin.

But which flavour?
Any opinions?

 

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You consider that to be old? It's got 512MB of RAM! You could comfortably run pretty much any desktop Linux OS on there. However, if you're looking for a lightweight one, then I'd suggest Vector Linux. It's pretty functional, looks reasonable, and has very low requirements to run nicely.

The other obvious lightweight one would be Xubuntu, or Fluxbuntu if you can put up with your machine looking like a piece of cr@p. Erm, what else is there? Gentoo? PCLinuxOS? It's very much about your preferences. Most people choose the OS based on how good it looks out of the box. After all, Linux is highly modular anyway, so you'd probably end up with the same functionality whichever distro you went for (Kernel version is a consideration).

Mint's nice too.

 

Ubuntu, Xubuntu

Ubuntu large user base (ubuntu forums) makes every problem encountered eventually pretty easy to solve. From my experience it has also the best resources and documentation floating on the net available.

 

Ubuntu.. if you dont have much experience with linux there is plenty of help out there - and its the easiest to get a grips with... and has plenty of drivers so you dont need to go hunting for that wireless driver!!

 

I like Mandrake, well now Mandriva, but Ubuntu is very good as discussed above, I think you might have to consider what you want from the OS, if it's ease of use Ubuntu is the way to go.

 

How about Damn Small Linux? It's a very lightweight Linux distro for older hardware.

 

I would like the option to play with Linux with and without GUI, but it will pretty much only be a file server, unless i can get it to play video to my tv, then i can stop using my main rig for that...

 

Hmmm

My spidey sense is tingling... do I smell SPAM?

 

Another plug for Ubuntu. I have it running great on a Dell Latitude D505, 1.5 gig processor, 512 meg ram. Did I mention it runs GREAT????

 

Yes, yes, I believe you may be right! :hhhmmm