Greetings to all. It's been a while!!

I'm in a computer science program and my laptop broke down. I had a dual boot Fedora/Windows setup. All I have to work on now is two old desktops with only 256 MB of Ram on each. I am in urgent need of a good light-weight Linux disto, but something that is not all that limiting.

I need a light-weight distro but I also need all of those developer tools (Apache, CLI php, MySQL, etc... And that raises another question, I was told that there was a package that includes all of this stuff giving you the choice of a graphic interface for SQL and Database stuff and allowing you to save your data and even import it in csv or Excel format, I don't remember what it's called)... Lastly, I don't have an Internet connection, so if I install anything (additional programs after installation) it will be via a USB flash drive, stuff that I download onto the USB drive when I'm elsewhere and I do have an Internet connection. To make things even more complicated, I don't have a DVD burner, I'll have to install from CDs.

I'm familiar with the usual light-weight distros (DSL, Puppy, etc), but they simply won't do. I need something with more stuff on it, something easy to install and that doesn't require a lot of tweaking, etc. Between work and studies, I don't have time to fiddle around, I've got to get this thing up and running fast so that I can get to work soon.

I'm hoping someone out there might have a quick and easy solution for me...

Many thanks.

This is a good question. My experience is limited with Fedora 5 and 6, Red Hat Enterprise, 7 and 9, and Ubuntu. Red Hat Enterprise tends to be bloated. Ubuntu Desktop tends to be non-lean. Ubuntu server might be worth a look.

Practically all linux distros come as a server or can easily be configured to be a linux server, so asking for a server is asking for something you already have or almost have.

Ubuntu server comes without an X interface, and LAMP.

slackware



Cheers,
Tink

I think what you want does not exist. The closest thing is Slackware, but I see that you've tried it, and you probably think it takes too much tweaking.

And you've tried Debian too, I see ... not good either eh ?

Now that I think of it, perhaps you are not really looking for a distro. What do you mean by light-weight ? Would this have anything to do with your window manager ? If you have been using GNOME, KDE, XFCE, then try some others (icewm, fluxbox, etc.).

Thank you all of you for your speedy replies!

Just a comment for H_TeXMeX_H. Keep in mind that the distros listed in my profile and former posts date back to at least a year ago. At the time, I wasn't looking for what I'm looking for now. I'm simply looking for a good, easy-to-use distro which already has the tools I'm looking for on it, or at least a way of installing them easily once the OS is installed. Easy software installation via a USB flash drive, for example, because I don't have an Internet connection at home. I urgently need this to carry out my work/studies...

In sum, something that will work well on 256MB of RAM with server, php stuff, MySql, etc.

Ubuntu requires a minimum of 64MB of RAM, but over 300MB is recommended. I don't know if Ubuntu will work well on 256MB of RAM. Is there something a little "smaller" than Ubuntu but something a little more involved than Puppy or DSL out there that I could use?

Thanks again for your input.