[NTLUG:Discuss] P-200's and Peanut Linux

[severian@pobox.com]

Howdy,
   I have run Peanut Linux on 3 machines and I've been quite happy with it, 
although it is not my choice for my main machines.  Peanut is kind of 
funky(in a good way) looking and when I get it running it stays up.  The 
limitations that have troubled me have been that it does not support 
machines with USB keyboards and development tools were not there ready to 
install.  They have fixed the later problem, but not the USB part.  That 
won't bother you. though.  Your problem is going to be memory.  One machine 
I intalled on had only 64 meg and that was marginal.  It ran OK, but there 
was a fair amount of swapping.  I would not try Peanut on less than 64 meg 
for serious use and 96 or 128 meg would be better.  Since you will be 
selling them to people who may use them as their main machine, I'd skip 
Peanut unless you unpgrade the RAM.  If you can budget a 128meg stick for 
each one, the 160 meg should be nice.
   A distribution aimed at small machines that looks promising is Vector 
Linux.  http://www.vectorlinux.com/   Peanut tries to be a premium 
distribution with a small install size.  Vector tries to run on small 
machines with a decent application set.  I have a 486-50 with 40 meg I am 
going to try it on when my new hard drive gets here.  I could not figure 
out how to get it on the 1 gig hard drive on my ThinkPad 701 with no floppy 
and no bootable CD.  A 4 gig drive should solve my problem.  Do your 
systems have floppy drives and NICS and do you have a fast pipe to the 
internet?  If so, you could try a network install of OpenBSD which is 
stable and is somewhat lighter on hardware requirements.  SuSE can do a 
nice network install too, but 32 meg is probably not adequate.
Good luck,
Ralph

In response to the welcome remarks of G S at 03:32 PM 5/4/03 -0500:

>These machines are P-200's, 32m RAM, 2.5 gb HD.    ... Is Peanut Linux any 
>good,   Has anyone tried it.    What are the problems with it.
>Is there a better small distro?