I just want to install a Linux Distribution on my old computer; so I can use that computer as a server. I know it won't be fast, or really good, but its just for fun.
I hear Slackware is the best for old computers, but my computer might be too old for it. This is my computers specs:
Celeron 400mhz Processor
256 Megs of Ram
6 gig hard drive

If my computer cannot run Slackware, is there an older version of it, or another distribution I can use. I just want to make a little server that will run 12 hours a day, and that I can access from my XP computer to manage, can this be done?

I have a 450 amd with 96 megs of ram acting at the first floor internet terminal in my house. It runs mdk 10.0. There are 3 users on the machine with fluxbox and rox filer as the gui/filemanager. Its not blistering fast but it serves for homework, internet browseing and the occiasional game of quake 2 or bzflag. Its also a terminal for remote x on my main machine on the third floor.

My firewall and local mail server is a 200 mhz pentium with 64 megs of ram.


So you should be ok with what you have planned for that machine. You might want to use the text install instead of the graphical install depending on the distro you choose.

That's a mighty good spec for a server box..

It won't be running X-windows or graphics, so it's plenty fine for any distro.

The speed of the hard drive will probably be the limiting factor, so a busy samba server might be out of the question.

Hi there,

I recently refitted an old Celeron 533MHz to a home samba server - added a 250GB HDD, and a decent NIC; I used gentoo, installing as stage 3 - less compiling at the beginning. I works like a charm...

I guess you can use any distro you want; I use gentoo, 'cause that way I can compile my system from scatch, and optimize it that way. IIRC Slack does also compile from source, so it doesn't really matter.

Point of view hardware, it looks fine, though if you want to use it as storage area, you should consider buying a new HDD. But as peter_rodd mentioned, your HDD might be slow; I am experiencing a transfer speed of ~20MB/s (or that's a least what hdparm says...)

Greets
G.

That's plenty machine for any distro you want to use. Slack will be right at home on it. Debian would be as well. Likely Mandrake 10 or 10.1 would be great as well. I think your real choice is wat tools come on the install disks. What fits you? The machine is more powerful than the desktop I was running up to about 1-1/2 years ago (P-II 350 w. 128mb RAM).

yeah.. i have slack 8.1 running on a 450.. it has been up and running for about 4 years with nothing wrong with it..
it does my MP3/video sharing as well as my MYSQL server.. samba.. all that..
no performance issues whatsoever...
slackware is a streamlined distro, but you have to know command line to set anything up.. let me know if i can help at all...
-sg

Thanks for all the replies.
Ok, since my system can handle a few distros, what one is the best for me to use?
This is what I want to do.
As I said above, I want it to be a server, for 12 hours or more a day.
But this is what I Really want.
I want to be able to remotely access the admin features from my XP computer.
So after I install linux, and set up the server, all I have to do is set the tower in the corner of my room, without a monitor or keyboard, or mouse connected, just the power cord and ethernet cord connected, Then when I want to start it up I just turn the computer on, and then access it, and update it from my Windows XP computer.
Can this be done? And if it can, what distro would work best for this. Also, I am a complete newbie at linux.

Any distro you want can do this. Make sure that the SSH daemon (server) is running on the machine and get PuTTY or another Windows SSH client to connect to it and there you go. I'd personally suggest Debian or Slackware for what you want to do, but you may find Fedora, SuSE or Mandrake less daunting for a newbie.

There's a good remote admin program called Webmin available. It runs as a https service so you can access it via any browser..