Tiny OS

[viranimus]

So last week I asked about opinions for Linux distributions. I now find myself in need of more suggestions and input to a specific set of circumstances.

I need to reformat a very very old desktop. Its a 2000 or so HP box with roughly 200 mhz processor, and likely no more than 256mb of system ram IF that. This PC will be used by someone barely computer literate for little or nothing more than general web browsing. With an install of WinXP: BLACK it runs adequately. It can to a limited extent handle things like youtube, but thats pushing the boundries of what this box can accomplish. So for someone using it to look up things like Yahoo, wikipedia, facebook, etc, its more than sufficient.

However being someone whos barely computer literate, they are also a virus magnet. So I want to put them on Linux to offer at least a better shot at keeping a PC usable for more than 2 months before its malware crippled.

So, I need a simple linux distribution, that is relatively user friendly and with an incredibly low system spec point of entry.

So taking any suggestions, Be it new distros with low profile, or more well known distros utilizing antiquated versions that ran with lower specs. What suggestions?

Thank you in advance, and would appreciate as much feedback as possible.

 

[DoPo]

OK, that would be outside my scope of knowledge. I know of DSL - Damn Small Linux whic, as the name suggests, is super light. I think it runs on something like 30-40 MB RAM. Actually, screw that, just looked it up [http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/], it could run on 16 MB or up to 128 MB RAM.

That's probably the simplest bet you have (along with other distros designed for being light). Other than that, you'll probably need to go and hack another distro apart. I myself wouldn't do that - too much work.

But once you get the OS on there, you'll need a slim browser to run on there, and I'm not sure I know any. Other Chrome/Chromium is the lightest one I know of. Well, aside from Lynx, but I doubt whoever is going to use that PC would want text-based browser. Although, I'd assume DSL comes with something. Actually, looking at it, it comes with Dillo, which is non resource intensive browser (also, netrik, which is text-based). So if you decide to go with something that's not DSL, I'd suggest Dillo, in that case.

 

[DazZ.]

Another tiny distro is Puppy Linux [http://puppylinux.org], seeing as both of these are tiny you may aswell just download them both/all and see which one suits you more.

I use Puppy from a flash drive as a backup virus removal/data recovery, but it would function happily as a web browser, even if you have no hard drive you can set an open writeable CD to function as storage and just run it from that.

But either Puppy or DSL is a good bet.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I second the Puppy Linux recommendation, very lightweight OS as far as system requirements go so it would be perfect for an old device.