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cadrian
Asked: 2009-11-06 00:51:17 +0800 CST

Linux for very old hardware

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I have a friend who wants to learn unix-like CLI (linux or anything, doesn't care) for some web admin tasks (installing apache and so on)

He only has very old hardware to spare:

  • AMD P6 II 300MHz
  • 64MB RAM
  • HD is more recent: 60GB

I tried the latest Debian & Ubuntu server- to no avail, or I would not have slept all night because of the sheer noise of the computer fan- but I digress...

Do you know any modern linux distrib that supports such an old hardware? Or should I use a very old distrib? (Debian Potato comes to mind)

Or is the hardware definitely too old?

UPDATE:

The problem I have with both Ubuntu and Debian is that the installer stalls at 74% (languages, locales). The requested language is Swiss French with a Swiss keyboard (QWERTZ). I don't know if it is relevant...

Also note that (although it will change later, of course) the box did not have any network connection. It may look strange for a would-be server, but it's only for learning at home.

linux

8 Answers

  1. According to the Damn Small Linux wiki, the minimum requirement for Damn Small Linux with X-Windows is 64 Mb. Also, according to this Pupply Linux Forum, you can run Puppy Linux on a machine with 64Mb of RAM.

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  2. Best Answer

    OpenBSD will run fine on that spec.

    It was the first sans-GUI operating system that I sank my teeth into many years ago.

    Indeed I still ran some of those same machines, at much lower specs than you give, until recently. When I got tired of the clutter, noise and power consumption.

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  3. I suggest to you to install Debian by netinst and setup only what you need (apache, etc). Debian NetInst

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  4. If the aim is to learn the Linux/UNIX CLI, does he have a relatively recent PC/Laptop that can run VirtualBox and just install Linux/BSD in a VM?

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  5. On that hardware, I'd really be going for NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD. Linux is a bit heavy on 64MB of RAM of late without going to uLibc and other stripped/non-standard/embedded solutions. Debian netinstall or Slackware would work also. Unfortunately, they don't hold a candle to the BSD documentation (and if he wants to learn the CLI, the FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD handbooks are priceless).

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  6. I have Centos 5.3 (no GUI) on a 400MHz PIII with 512MB of RAM running Hylafax, Nagios, MRTG and Apache as a proxy server. As that isn't much better than what your friend has, Centos may be worth a try, especially if you leave off the gui. I've tried to find the minimum hardware requirements for Centos but can't find them.

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  7. i started with freebsd and til this day, the mail server at my old job (5 yrs ago) is still running it. Now I manage a RH network and they have pros and cons to both.

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  8. http://linuxfreedom.com/ above link has so many distro you try from them.

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