Recommend a lightweight distro

[cantab]

I'm looking for a lightweight distro - both in terms of RAM usage and also disk space - for an old laptop (1 GHz Celeron with 120 MB RAM). It seem very temperamental, possibly on the graphics front - I've had numerous *buntu installs fail, or once installed X doesn't work at all. So multiple suggestions are good. For the desktop environment, I like icewm, fluxbox is good too.

[dibl]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

I think Xubuntu is looking for 128M of RAM -- it might work. Also there is AntiX, a Mepis derivative designed for lesser machines.

[MoonRise]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

Xubuntu and Puppy are the two that come to my mind when talking light weight.

[marshallbanana]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

Also, Damn Small Linux

[Snowhog]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

DSL - yes. Probably the 'lightest' and most feature packaged Linux disto. At around 50Mb, it's amazing what they have included.

[nogagplz]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

If you don't mind getting very down and dirty, you can try CRUX on it. It's very light, source based distribution that gives you control over almost every aspect of it. =)

Otherwise, DSL might be for the win

[CVPunk]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

I would say DSL (Damn Small Linux) if you are well versed in Linux.
If you want a small OS that looks really clean try out TinyMe.

[Robin T Cox]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

An interesting (and very small) new distro worth trying is Slitaz:

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slitaz

[trikinomitry101]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

Damn small get's my vote! I know this site houses a few that are more than 700MB's but most are under a gig. And they all run on a thumb drive, which means it was designed to not require a ton of resources!

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

However! The one I keep on my thumb drive, at all times, and isn't on the list, isn't nearly as functional, but it does what I want! gparted! it just makes life easy^_^

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php

[dibl]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

If you want to get extreme, there's slax.

http://www.slax.org/

I installed it on a 2GB SD card, which can boot on my Eee PC 4G.

[fulcj001]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

i have slax on my 2gb flash drive and it only takes 350mb. Its really good and i used it regularly until i came across kubunt about a week ago.

[carolinason]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

I've been a Debian head for long time. One reason is you build it from the ground up. Here's a good link and is the same thing your talking about. Instead of using etch use Lenny the net install is here
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
article
http://www.go2linux.org/installing-a...debian-fluxbox

[super.rad]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

Nobodys mentioned Arch yet
http://www.archlinux.org
Arch will run brilliantly on old hardware, can be really lightweight.
The installation is a bit harder than some other distros but as long as you follow the Beginners Guide on the wiki it won't be a problem.
After the installation you will have a CLI base install and then you can install X and the DE/WM of your choice

[Dart]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

Try Vector Linux - they claim it runs on 96mb ram - full features

[jglen490]

Re: Recommend a lightweight distro

I have an IBM ThinkPad 365XD; I believe this qualifies as old and small. It has a Pentium 120 CPU, 72 MB RAM, and a 3.2 GB hard drive. It runs DSL just fine with no tweaking and no under the hood time on my part required (other than just exploring). As an old, small machine from a time long, long ago (and perhaps a galaxy far, far away) it doesn't run wifi. It probably could, if one can find a 5 volt PCCard, but then it would only run 802.11b with WEP and I don't want to do that and sacrifice the WPA2 that the rest of my home PCs run. The 10/100 Ethernet PCCard runs just fine, even though dragging a wire around is a bit of a pain.

I don't use it much anymore, now that I have a perfectly functional ThinkPad T20 (PIII 700mhz/512MB RAM/12GB drive) that is wonderfully at home with Kubuntu 8.04 - including wifi (Broadcom chip).

Linux rocks!! Kubuntu rocks!!! DSL rolls along!!!!