Need help setting up workstation

Petee

I've got this old computer sitting around that I want to put to some good use.
The specs of the computer are:
64 MB RAM
1 GB Hard Drive (I'll use this for swap space only)
4 GB Hard Drive
200 Mhz Pentium

I know this isn't much to work with, but it's what I've got.
Now, here's what I want to be able to do with this machine. I want to put a version of linux on it, but I don't know what one I should use. I need to be able to connect to my home NIS/NFS server using the computer's D-Link DWL-520 wireless card. Some software things I'll need are a graphical interface, internet browser, and office type programs.

So, does anyone have a good suggestion as to what distro of linux I should use for this? Also, how would I go about setting up the wireless connection?

I appreciate any help that anyone can provide.

johanfh

Since you have 5 gb of hard disk space the version doesn't matter so much, especially if you're working in consolemode (although you could try DSL or Puppylinux or maybe some old version, like redhat 6 or suse 7) But use a small windowmanager, for example fvwm. Because with most linuxdistro's you can easily choose wich packets to install you should be able to create a fast working linuxbox. Don't use OpenOffice on it! Instead, use for example AbiWord (small wordprocessor, good conversion from and to Word)
I wouldn't use a lifecd (knoppix or ubuntu) because you can't customize them as much as you want before the first boot.

Good luck!
JohanFH

corey

With that amount of RAM, you're not going to have luck with a Live CD. So, use the command installers, such as Ubuntu's alternate install. I would suggest that you stick with either Debian or Slackware if you want that sucker to sing. Of course, Puppy is a really zippy distro (and well established).

Petee

Yeah, I recently got done installing the latest Ubuntu Alternate CD. It took, literally, a few days for the installer to finish. It's going reallyslow though. I can't do anything with it. I'm thinking of trying Xubuntu next.