Maximum PC

I was thinking of using Xubuntu, but seeing how old this thing is, I am thinking different. What do you guys think I should use? DSL? I would like to give him functionality as well as usability.

Laptop specs?

If it is anything greater than two dixie cups and a string, *buntu will probably work on it. If not, knoppix, slacker etc may be a better choice.
No harm in trying out several distros, that's what they are out there for.

Ubuntu was chugging on a PIII 600 mhz box that I had... and I mean CHUGGING...

We should point out that the distro is only relevant insofar as it offers lightweight window managers and desktop environments.

Any distro is going to chug if you're running Gnome or KDE ... but if you throw on Enlightenment instead, your system will be far more responsive.

With really antiquated hardware, though, you'll want to choose a distro that uses a lightweight WM by default .. otherwise, your box could hang during the install process when it tries to launch KDE and finds itself fatally short of resources.

I was kinda surprised actually. The box used to run Windows Server 2003 quite well. I figured dropping in *Buntu would be cake.

Right now for some reason, the damn thing will not let me enter setup at all at the bios when it did before.... I would like to put slack on it, then give it back to friend since right now it is running XP XD


When I hit F2 to enter setup, nothing happens. If I can get it to work with me I will put slack on there.

Silly question, but is F2 the right button to enter the setup? Some systems use a different key to enter the BIOS. F1 and Delete are popular keys for this.

Puppy, DSL, Slack... I was also thinking you could do a minimal install of most any distro, and use it's package manager to get the necessary apps. With a base install of debian, all you'd need is

$su
(your root password)
#apt-get update
#apt-get install (list of apps, including a lightweight WM of your choice.)

I use Fluxbox daily, on an older machine I had, and even on my Core2 Duo gaming rig. Enlightenment was buggy when I used it for Debian Etch, but that was almost year ago, and "Lenny" probably installs a newer version.

Fluxbox was cool looking under Gentoo...

man was that a lot of work to keep that system updated

CPi's were PII machines, it's probably a PII 366 - but I'll let the OP confirm. Chances are also good it's got either 128 or 256MB of RAM - the slots were close together on this unit, so it made using full height SODIMM's a pain.

F2 is indeed the correct keystroke to enter BIOS - a long pause and a refusal to boot usually means it's having a problem detecting the hard disk. If it's just ignoring the keystroke, I'd try plugging a PS/2 keyboard into it and seeing what happens (yes, there's a single PS/2 port in the back)

As for the distro, I'll 2nd Jip that it isn't so much the distro as the window manager you use - and all I can really contribute there is that Gnome and KDE are probably not what you want...