Better Off on that Old PC w DSL

Story: How To Revive An Old PC With LinuxTotal Replies: 1
Author Content
vainrveenr

Mar 26, 2007
3:34 PM EDT
Ivan writes in the InfoWeek piece
Quoting: the first distro I had selected, Ubuntu, landed near the top of the list.
When this was unsuccessful, Ivan was then able to get Debian running.

I would strongly beg to differ on his choice of distros. DamnSmallLinux is much better for this purpose, and yet DSL was not even considered in the Linux Distribution Chooser list at http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php Sort of a disservice to DSL, as DSL has been running among the top ten distros at the DW site http://www.distrowatch.com for some time now. Also, as IBM Software Engineer Martyn Honeyford writes in his article 'Reduce your Linux memory footprint' at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-...
Quoting:One great thing about Linux distributions is that they generally don't cost anything, so it's easy to download several and try them out for a while to see which you prefer and how they all perform on your hardware. If you have very limited hardware, you may want to look at a distribution like Damn Small Linux, which claims to run on systems with specs as low as a 486DX processor with 16MB of RAM.
AAMOF, DSL is usually downloaded as a 50MB iso CD and certainly does not require the 20GB drive Ivan used for its basic functionality. Hard drives of these capacities work fine with DSL: 8.4 GB, 6.4 GB, 5 GB, 4 GB, 2 GB, 1 GB, 840 MB, 540 MB, heck even 256 MB or maybe less!!??

Any other small footprint distros that the Linux Distribution Chooser list and Ivan should have evaluated ??
Scott_Ruecker

Mar 26, 2007
3:51 PM EDT
I agree completely, DSL has been one of my favorite distro's since I came across it a couple of years ago. It made a P2 450mhz machine run faster than my new one at the time and I bet it would smoke my new machine too.

I have used it to restore an old IBM laptop that was running Win95 (It had a "Windows 95 Enabled" sticker on it) along with other K6 and P2 machines that I was told were "junk".

Damn Small Linux is a godsend to anyone who has an old machine that they think is not usable anymore. Combine it with a high speed Internet connection and you have a very usable and functional machine on your hands.

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