I am thinking about giving linux a try, how much computer power do I need. I have an old pentium 166, with 40mb ram will it work? Not ready to go on my new computer until I have spent some time playing around. Never done this forum thing before, lots of things to try. |
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Marcel GagnéWriter and Free Thinker at Large |
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Minimum requirements
The absolute minimum requirement for a running Linux system are
- 3x86 CPU
- 16 Mb RAM
- 1 DSHD floppy disk drive
- keyboard & video
but, that's a minimum, character-based linux, and not a shiny GUI based Linux.
For GUI based linux, the requirements are more. Typically, the more the better, but a 486 w 32Mb ram and 1Gb or so of HD will get you a usable graphical Linux, if you pick a lightweight GUI to on it.
For your specs, I'd suggest you go with Blackbox or XFCE (dont even think of Gnome or KDE; they'd swamp that pentium 166). Give yourself as much swap space as you can (your top limit should be about 256 Mb) and you should be OK.
FWIW, although you'd probably be better off with a distro like Ubuntu or Knoppix, look into a less "friendly" distro first. Knoppix and Ubuntu require more power than you can safely spare, and you're likely to not be happy with either. I've run a GUI Slackware system on less than you are considering, but I'd never consider Ubuntu on such a system.
HTH
--
Lew Pitcher
Master Codewright & JOAT-in-training
Registered Linux User #112576 (http://counter.li.org/)
Slackware - Because I know what I'm doing.
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