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Stats on This?

Story: The Secret Army of Operation Open SourceTotal Replies: 4
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flufferbeer

Jul 26, 2006
3:52 PM EDT 		What distros and kernels tend to be used on such older HW (e.g., Red Hat or Slackware or Mandrake or SuSE or whatever versions 9 >, kernels ~2.4.x ) ????

Used as basic workstations, as "test" systems, or as sole-purpose server infrastructure devices (e.g., file/print servers, DNS servers, packet-filtering firewalls, ... etc.) ???

Used for the standard KDE/Gnome Xapps or just for CLI basics ??

Any hard statistics on any of these ?
Sander_Marechal

Jul 26, 2006
3:59 PM EDT 		I don't know any stats, but the advice I hear most (and use myself) is that you need a PIII 500 or 600 to get by on the heavier distro's (SUSE, Ubuntu). Below that, look to smaller distro's as Puppy Linux or DSL.

I see no reason to have a 2.4 kernel though. 2.6 should work fine IIRC.
grouch

Jul 26, 2006
4:19 PM EDT 		I have a 486 running Debian Sarge with a 2.4 kernel, just because I'm too lazy to compile a newer one for it. (It's a router/firewall and is just fine with the stock Debian kernel).

All my other boxes have a 2.6 kernel: P166, K6-2/500, PIII 866, Athlon 1.2, P4 2.2. All run Debian Sarge, but I'm in the process of upgrading the P166 to Etch right now.

Pick your packages to suit the job.

Don't run an older version of a distro just because it's old hardware. The reason for the packages being updated is because they needed to be.
techiem2

Jul 26, 2006
4:27 PM EDT 		Yeah, it's not so much an issue of linux itself having high sysreqs, it's that those "heavier" distros install every pretty gui option and enable about every service known to man by default, thus making them need heftier systems to run on without seriously tweaking them out.

I'm a gentoo with fluxbox guy myself. :)
jimf

Jul 26, 2006
4:38 PM EDT 		> Don't run an older version of a distro just because it's old hardware. The reason for the packages being updated is because they needed to be.

Agree, especially about the 2.6 Kernel series which has more than enough miles on it to be deemed reliable.

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