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

[Joel Sinor]

On Sun, 04 May 2003 15:32:20 -0500
G S <falconjetflyer at netscape.net> wrote:

> I am the proud owner of about 40 p-200 computers and I am toying with 
> loading Peanut Linux
> on them before sale.     I tried on one Compaq 4000 200MMX machine
> with 32 meg of RAM
> and had a tough time getting it to install.   It was kind of a 
> progressive affair.    
<snip>
Interesting that you are selling some of these, as I am interested in
some extra "victim" boxes for some testing I am doing.

> 
> These machines are P-200's, 32m RAM, 2.5 gb HD.      Am I pissing in
> the wind wanting to run Linux with X windows on a machine this small? 
>    Is 
> Peanut Linux any good,   Has anyone tried it.    What are the problems
> 
> with it.    
> Is there a better small distro?      
<snip>
As for your X11 question, it depends.  If you want to use the later
Gnome and KDE, you probably are in trouble. You will probably want
256-512MB of swap just to be safe, though this seriously eats into your
2.5GB disk. I would recommend Slackware or Debian as they have
minimalistic installers and are easy to get on small/old/slow hardware. 
They are also fairly widely known.  I would also recommend a more
minimalistic window manager such as icewm/twm/fvwm2 as this will give
you more acceptable GUI performance. (You can still *install* KDE and
Gnome and even use their apps if you wnat to).