Hi,
I purchased the book "Linux for dummies" which just about sums up my ability, and have a choice of installing Linspire 4.5, Mandrakelinux 10.1, Xandros 2.5 from an included disc.
I want to install it on an older Sony vaio multimedia desktop Pentium 200 MHz running windows 95,160 MB of Ram,2 x 10 GB HD.

Is it going to work? I tried the linspire version and it hung at the install screen. When I ran the diagnostics, it stopped at:
hdd: lost interrupt.

It is such a good computer, s video, midi, etc I wanted to bring it back to life and I was told you can recuperate older computers by changing to Linux.
Any suggestions most welcome.
Northwoods.

You need a lightweight distro like slackware for example. Search the forum this has been asked many times.

*EDIT*
Welcome to LQ Forums

Nonononon don't listen to him slackwear is for people with real Linux skill not that you don't have any just going off your comment. Try Xubuntu just google it and you want the ALTERNATIVE install CD because to normal one is a live CD version of the install which will fry your system (like it did mine). Xubuntu is light weight but still has all the "newer" Linux stuff.

Try damnsmalllinux. It's using fluxbox so should work fine on your computer.

dsl should be pretty damn fast on any machine, but if you really want to do something with the pc, and if you have little linux experience go with xubuntu. It's really ubuntu with a light graphical interface, but very comfortable anyway.

Try both, I love dsl, maybe you can do something with it

- I didn't know the non-alternative was a live cd, that's pretty strange.

Woow, I didn't even know these distributions existed! I guess the answer to my question is yes.Thank you for your rapid replies. I can see there are a lot of options about linux. I will try in this order Xubuntu, dsl, slackware and see if I get anywhere and post back.
Is there a reason why none of the distributions that came with my book are worth trying?
Thanks again
Northwoods

All of the distributions included should run on 128MB RAM but they recommend 256MB. Both KDE and Gnome are resource hogs and so will be very slow on this PC. This was the reason a lightweight windows manger was suggested. slackware and dsl are good alternative distributions. I think Xubuntu might also run slow due to lack of RAM.
I would try Mandrake and see.

No clue on why linspire failed to install. Is hdd your cdrom drive?

So don't use KDE or Gnome which are depressing attempts to ape Windows, use Enlightenment.

Incidentally Northwoods, weird coincidence - have just been reading about Operation Northwoods; have you thought of changing your name to Mongoose?

I'd personally run KDE on that 200mhz computer with 160megs of RAM. I don't know about Ubuntu, but certainly Debian 3.1 can run KDE fine on that.

128megs is the minimum I'd run KDE on; 160megs is okay.

even if... so what.

I had kde on my 450mhz machine with 384mb sdram a year ago, and it was depressingly slow. I really doubt it would run "fine" on those specs. We're talking about a recent kde, right

Obviously, either your standards are very different from mine, or your linux install had a lot of heavy stuff bogging it down. The specific version of KDE I'm talking about is KDE 3.4, which is what Debian 3.1 uses.

Why is it so characteristic for people to get tense and defend Windows? Let the scum defend themselves - they spend vast sums on it.

I don't think that was an attempt to defend windows, i think it was an attempt to defend the DE's. Which whilst i dont agree they try to "ape" other operating system, they do provide a standard (yet, this is distro controlled i think) UI by default that many users may be used to, that can be built upon and configured almsot indefinatly to how you want it, i think they've done a bloody good job too.

As for KDE, i dont know where this notion of it being a massive resouce hog comes from, i have a 700 MHZ 200 MB RAM Lappy that KDE (3.5) ran more than fine on (with transparency, and backgrounds, although not many window effects), a hell of a lot faster than XP anyway. gnome ran slightly better, and fluxbox best of all, but whereas KDE has alot of things built in, fluxbox is just a WM and so needs the purrrty extras (superkaramba is quite buggy when not running on top of KDE for me).

I'm using kde 3.3 on pentium 2 350mhz 320mb ram with crystal window decoration and transparent window. It runs pretty smoothly. It depends on how you define "fast". Personally i prefer fluxbox. =)

I have installed the Fedora Core 3 distro on Pentium 233MHz or 200MHz class systems several times. They take a while to boot and run rather slowly, but at least the installations were successful. Each machine has 128MB RAM, but I managed to install on 96MB RAM once just to see if it would work. They have a minimum of 6GB hard drive space, usually a 4GB disk devoted to / and a 2GB that holds /boot and swap.

I install Gnome because I prefer a GUI, but it probably won't be used much once I've completely finished all the installations. I'm building a supercomputer from all these old boxes.