# what distro for Old Machine



## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Feb 6, 2012)

Hey guys, I have this Northgate Machine my mom gave me (why?). 
It is a Socket A Athlon XP1700+ and it currently has 256MB of RAM but im planning to up it to 1-2GB of ram. it has a 250GB ATA 100 Drive and a DVDROM. I had to replace the CPU fan as the old one had stopped running. I had 768mb of RAM but one of the sticks was bad.

I plan to use it for Usenet and/or sell it to a coworker as a websurfer/papers machine but would be nice if I could get it running some nicer stuff like media. The graphics is an onboard S3 graphics. The board is the Syntax SV266M http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813183009
I included the link for better H/W clarification for OS compatibility.
Which Distro to run?


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## Peter1986C (Feb 6, 2012)

I suggest trying Linux Mint, but I don't know if it can offer a decent display driver for the graphics. You therefore may have multimedia/resolution issues but Mint seems to be better at putting "weird" hw to a working state than e.g. Ubuntu. If you are feeling adventurous you could try Gentoo, but because everything will be done manually (by a CLI) and compiled from source it is a lot of work (when "done" it will be time to install a GUI). Gentoo gives a good chance of letting everything work and (if configured properly) run smoothly even on older hw.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Feb 6, 2012)

Chevalr1c said:


> I suggest trying Linux Mint, but I don't know if it can offer a decent display driver for the graphics. You therefore may have multimedia/resolution issues but Mint seems to be better at putting "weird" hw to a working state than e.g. Ubuntu. If you are feeling adventurous you could try Gentoo, but because everything will be done manually (by a CLI) and compiled from source it is a lot of work (when "done" it will be time to install a GUI). Gentoo gives a good chance of letting everything work and (if configured properly) run smoothly even on older hw.



Right now Im running Lubuntu but the CPU is maxed out doing simple crap like loading apps and running SABnzbd. LinuxMint is not able to run on 256 mb correctly. if i can find a good deal on 2gb of PC2100 RAM ( less than $40) then yeah, Id seriously look at LinuxMint. ( I installed it on my mom's lappy.) Right now though im working with limited RAM.


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## ShiBDiB (Feb 6, 2012)

I'd hold off on bothering to do anything til u get a little more ram.. nothing crazy just a gig or 2


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Feb 6, 2012)

ShiBDiB said:


> I'd hold off on bothering to do anything til u get a little more ram.. nothing crazy just a gig or 2



Thanks for the tip. Im currently running it for downloads and looking for a good deal. Any ideas? im not real sure how fast the 1700+ is


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 7, 2012)

I am currently running Ubuntu 11.04 on a socket A system with 2 gig of mem and it runs great. I was running 1g of mem and it still ran fine. Proc is at 2.2 ghz. Here a screen shot


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## chamaecyparis (Feb 7, 2012)

~1.5GHz and 266 FSB -- at least 512MB required to run even antiX, which is my recommendation.  I value performance over looks, just to tell you where I'm coming from. It's Debian-based, so has lots of software packages available.  Plus, the _smxi_ script makes post-install tweaking easy.

If wanting a 'buntu-derived distro, I would have to steer you towards wattos next; then peppermint.  Both the latter 'like' at least 1024MB RAM, however.

The more RAM, the better, as either of the three above will improve significantly in performance directly with RAM increases.  

Once the user learns linux, an eye-candy distro like Bodhi can be tested; (Not for newbies).

Best wishes!


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## Drone (Feb 7, 2012)

Don't install new ubuntu or mint. They are too cluttered. Install mint 9


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Feb 7, 2012)

i just installed DSL 4.4


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## Frick (Feb 7, 2012)

Killer_Rubber_Ducky said:


> i just installed DSL 4.4



Was about to recommend that. But to be honest that is almost too light for that system. You could try Xubuntu or maybe CentOS. I tried CentOS on a similiar specced machine (1GB RAM) and it worked very well. Xubuntu too will work like a charm.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Feb 7, 2012)

Frick said:


> Was about to recommend that. But to be honest that is almost too light for that system. You could try Xubuntu or maybe CentOS. I tried CentOS on a similiar specced machine (1GB RAM) and it worked very well. Xubuntu too will work like a charm.



eh right now it has 256mb of ram and im going to run usenet


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## digibucc (Feb 7, 2012)

and sab is a great network-oriented app, i have mine on a server and can add/view from anywhere on the network. i love it.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Feb 7, 2012)

digibucc said:


> and sab is a great network-oriented app, i have mine on a server and can add/view from anywhere on the network. i love it.



yeah but its a resource hog so dsl should work fine what with using only 64mb of ram and next to no cpu


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Feb 7, 2012)

i installed (frugal) dsl and it freezes after rebooting so Im probably going to run it from cd only. i need good debian compat distros that run smoothly on 64mb of ram. I need to use it to run sickbeard and sabnzbd only.
Im just going to part out the machine.


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## dzero (Mar 28, 2012)

Try a livecd/usb of Puppy Linux or Haiku to see if those will work well with your system.


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