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Overall, Slackware makes a pretty good distro for lightweight machines. Using Linux on a FAT partition isn’t optimal and comes with some performance drawbacks, but it’s worth trying just to get a feel for Linux. I recommend this one only for users with an older Windows machine who want to test-drive Linux. The entire ZipSlack distro should fit within 100MB of disk space. It’s designed to run out of a directory on a FAT partition, which makes it an easy distro to start with if you’ve got an old machine that still runs Windows 95 or Windows 98.
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ZipSlack is another Slackware-based distribution for older hardware, and newer hardware as well if the machine has a FAT partition. Firefox, for example, takes far longer to start on this machine than I’d like, though it runs okay once it’s up. In many cases, applications would take forever (okay, a minute or so) to start up, but then run fairly well afterwards. Slackware comes with the typical assortment of desktop software, some of which ran well on the old machine, while some ran slowly. On Slackware, I spent most of my time in Fluxbox, which proved to be a very usable desktop, even with limited resources. Slackware includes a good selection of lightweight window managers, including Xfce, Fluxbox, and FVWM. I wound up with about 800MB free, though careful selection of package sets could trim that down even further.
#Linux distros for older computers install
As a rule, when I install Slackware, I often go for the full install, but with only 3GB to work with, I was a bit more careful. It took about an hour to install a set of packages on the test machine. Slackware’s installer had no problem with the Pentium II machine. Though Slackware isn’t specifically geared to lightweight machines, it’s well-suited for older hardware. I started the tests off with Slackware Linux 10.2. I apologize in advance if your favorite lightweight distro is not represented here. The distributions ranged from popular “mainstream” distros such as Slackware and Debian to distros that are specifically developed for lightweight machines, such as Damn Small Linux (DSL). Next, I selected a handful of lightweight Linux distributions that looked promising, and started downloading. You can run Linux on older and slower machines, but this is the most under-powered machine I had available.
#Linux distros for older computers pro
Igor is a Pentium II 233MHz machine with 64MB of RAM, an 8x CD-ROM drive, a 3GB hard drive, and an integrated ATI 3D Rage Pro video card with 4MB of video RAM. For these tests, I dug out Igor, an old PC that had been collecting dust in my closet.