Which ISO would be better for P4 gift with only 256 Mb.

[frazelle09]

i'm planning on giving away an older P4 that we've had around here for a while - lol.  It's for a friend's son, one who i told i would give him my old CPU and get him set up with Linux.  He says he wants to learn programming - he's 8 years old.

i got out my ole trusty CPU, attached an also old moniter (he already has one), plugged in an old hd i used to use and turned it on.  It started with PCL 2010!  Yea Linux!!  It's on a 160 Gb hd.  It also seemed to run pretty well but i suspect i'm going to have to install a more modern ISO from the repos - well, from the d/l section.  Which one would you recommend - the full KDE? the XFCE?, or the LXDE?

At this point all i am capable of is helping him d/l and install Scratch so he can get started with something.  One of the posters on another thread also suggested also starting with Bash programming, but i can hardly make up a simple "copy/paste" bash executable which lets me use @ when i switch to Spanish keyboard.

Any ideas would be of great help.  As always, Have a great afternoon! 

[Just17]

Its pointless, IMO, installing (or trying to) KDE on that machine as it only has 256MB memory ....  the minimum recommended for KDE is 1GB IIRC.

I suggest LXDE Mini, and install only those packages that are required.

Even with LXDE the pc would benefit from more memory.

[µT6]

the minimum is 768 or at least that said in the page a weeks ago

can you put a little more ram and put xfce or lxde?  256 is very little ram, he won't enjoy the machine much so 512 could be considerably better, also for internet and some basic games

[gseaman]

I use lxde on a machine with 512mb ram and it works well. But, I can very quickly overwhelm the machine if I start too many tasks at once. With 256 ram, I would stick with Puppy Linux or one of the other really small distros.

Galen

[frazelle09]

Thanks, guys for your input.  Well, i got LXDE on just fine (after finding an older CD/DVD reader that could be plugged in), however - i can't believe this - but the MB doesn't have an Ethernet port!  Maybe that's why i have a WiFi card in it... - duh.

However it's one of those Arthos and the OS doesn't have a driver for it.  Ug.  It says it's an AR5212/AR5213.  The error is:  Unable to find network interface for selected device (using ath5k driver).

i'll check the forums and see what comes up.  Thanks for all your suggestions, guys, and have a great evening! 

[bicol_willem]

I cannot believe you will have that much fun with just 256 mb of RAM. Too little is too little. With a (too) low memory machine its better to have no swap partition for once it starts using swap it will slow down to frozen honey. See if somehow you can beef up the memory a bit. 512 I see as a absolute minimal.
That lan card, try to locate a windows driver with ndiswrapper.

There is a known OS running on 256 Mb ....... WindowsXP  (Just to upset you) 

[frazelle09]

Thanks, bicol_willem, i'm trying not to get upset - lol.  i think that was the last version i ran before i discovered the wonderful world of PCL!

i've opened another thread for the wifi challenge in Networkinghttp://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,112425.0.html.

i'll have to see if this memory is available somewhere and how much they want for it.  Uh, how do i get rid of the swap partition?

Thanks for your help and have a wonderful evening!  

[bicol_willem]

Thanks, bicol_willem, i'm trying not to get upset - lol.  i think that was the last version i ran before i discovered the wonderful world of PCL!

i've opened another thread for the wifi challenge in Networkinghttp://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,112425.0.html.

i'll have to see if this memory is available somewhere and how much they want for it.  Uh, how do i get rid of the swap partition?

Thanks for your help and have a wonderful evening!  

Install it with / and /home partitions created only.  If it is already installed, use i.e. a liveCD with gparted on it or Pmagic and delete swap and give i.e. /home the extra space. You then have to adjust the /etc/fstab file.

[Crow]

Why do you want to get rid of swap?     is useful if you're low in memory.

256 MB is good for LXDE, I know, I have installed it with that amount of RAM; sure, the more the better put more if you can.

I use to install my edu remaster in PIII with 256 MB, and run games using Wine, Flash and Java (yes, Scratch runs)

Are they slow? you bet, but not unusable, maybe OO4Kids is not all that good but I install Abiword or you can even try RoughDraft  http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd_overview.htm   and run it using Wine.

Use LXDE Mini only if you are ready to spend several hours configuring it to your liking.

Good luck with your install frazelle enjoy it  

[bicol_willem]

Why do you want to get rid of swap?

My experiences with low memory systems is that when swap gets used all but all performance of the system is slowing down to a level unworkable.

I was recently setting up a LXDE system with 384 Mb and although things looked good during setup it turned out a hassle. Sometime we open just too many apps (as we are used to that) and once , let´s say, overloaded it grinds down to useless.  Maybe the definition of useless varies here 
Of course you´re mileage may vary but I consider 256 as "just not enough".

[Just17]

As Swap is used as 'extra memory' in effect, it would IMO be counter-productive not to have Swap on a low resources machine.
If you had lots of memory I could see the reasoning - although not agree - with not creating a Swap space.

[bicol_willem]

As Swap is used as 'extra memory' in effect, it would IMO be counter-productive not to have Swap on a low resources machine.
If you had lots of memory I could see the reasoning - although not agree - with not creating a Swap space.

I think you change your mind when you see a low memory/capacity system at work using swap 
Way back when PC´s had 64 and 128 Mb (slow) RAM, swap was probably useful. It all was slow anyway.
Swap is useful for hibernating laptops but how many use that function for PC?
For I forget: This is just my opinion and I use swap partitions which ideally never have to kick in. Enough (those day´s faster) RAM keeps things on speed.

[frazelle09]

"I think you change your mind when you see a low memory/capacity system at work using swap  Wink
Way back when PC´s had 64 and 128 Mb (slow) RAM, swap was probably useful. It all was slow anyway.
Swap is useful for hibernating laptops but how many use that function for PC?
For I forget: This is just my opinion and I use swap partitions which ideally never have to kick in. Enough (those day´s faster) RAM keeps things on speed."

Ah, that's why my Gkrell never reports any swap being used, neither on my older machine, nor on this newer, Dual Core one.  Oh.

Have a wonderful morning! 

[Just17]

As Swap is used as 'extra memory' in effect, it would IMO be counter-productive not to have Swap on a low resources machine.
If you had lots of memory I could see the reasoning - although not agree - with not creating a Swap space.

I think you change your mind when you see a low memory/capacity system at work using swap 
Way back when PC´s had 64 and 128 Mb (slow) RAM, swap was probably useful. It all was slow anyway.
Swap is useful for hibernating laptops but how many use that function for PC?
For I forget: This is just my opinion and I use swap partitions which ideally never have to kick in. Enough (those day´s faster) RAM keeps things on speed.

I have 

Failure to even install without Swap available 

[bicol_willem]

As Swap is used as 'extra memory' in effect, it would IMO be counter-productive not to have Swap on a low resources machine.
If you had lots of memory I could see the reasoning - although not agree - with not creating a Swap space.

I think you change your mind when you see a low memory/capacity system at work using swap 
Way back when PC´s had 64 and 128 Mb (slow) RAM, swap was probably useful. It all was slow anyway.
Swap is useful for hibernating laptops but how many use that function for PC?
For I forget: This is just my opinion and I use swap partitions which ideally never have to kick in. Enough (those day´s faster) RAM keeps things on speed.

I have 

Failure to even install without Swap available 

Now that´s weird .... 
But alas .... Let´s hope frazelle09 find his way