Hi guys!
I need advice about my project. I'm planning to install mandrake 9.1 in a old PC Pentium 200 MMX, 128 Mb RAM, 3.5 Gb hd, currently running (but to be substituted) win98, connected to a newer one by a crossover cable and a eth card each. This newer is a P IV 1.4 Ghz, 256 Mb RAM, 40 Gb hd, running MDK9.1/winXP, it provides internet, sharing files and printer to the older one.

The point is to make a very minimalist installation with a window manager in the style of fluxbox, known software: the Open Office, xmms; and to be recomended: gui web browser, gui mail client, a gui file manager, gui text editor, gui terminal, a gui manager for the logins and logouts, and very few things more!

Please let me know what you thing about the viability and what things I must check before formatting crazily the win98 (besides backups).
Also I'll greatly appreciate any reccomendation about what software to install in compatibility with fluxbox, neither KDE based nor Gnome. Thanks a lot!

might be an idea to test the box with a bootable distro like Knoppix ( www.knoppix.net ), just to check hardware compatibility (save you wiping a W98 box for nothing).

samba is nice if you're sharing files with windows.

Thanks a lot frogman! My apologies for delay in aswer. I had my Dial-Up connexion almost full time downloading for more than 35 hours this litle marvel of Knoppix. It detected everything automatically, even sharing internet connexion and printer! with almost no human intervention!. Of course everything works very slowly due to two main reasons: the access speed of my old CD drive (x24) and because it creates a ramdisk, this is a virtual disk mounting a big part of the RAM as if it were a hard disk. Of a total RAM of 128 MB, 96 of them were dedicated to ramdisk leaving only 32 MB for the rest of processes. So my old PC Pentium 200MMX apears to be fully compatible with Linux. But... what about witch software to install? in accordance with the low performances of this old machine. I'll be so gratefull if someone posts more ideas. I'll test them and I'll post the results and my experiences. See you!

Just guessing, I think your P200mmx and 128MB will be fine if you don't run KDE or Gnome. Linux gets faster the more memory you have, and these two windowing systems take up gobs of memory.

I found this part of a post recently (sorry, can't remember where):

"Anyway, I tested to run some DM/WM from console and measured their memory requirement using vmstat. The result was (roughly):
KDE = 60 MB
XFCE4 = 33 MB
IceWM = 23 MB
Fluxbox = 13 MB"

DM=Display Manager, WM=Window Manager

By the way, if you're interested in using old PC's as X terminals on a server, check out www.k12ltsp.org

- TSloth

Hi guys! tested three gui file managers all of them KDE and Gnome independents: Endeavour 2, Rox-filer and Gentoo file manager (this last has nothing to be related with the known distribution). Besides his spartan aspect, I felt in love with Gentoo. Although It is a litle tricky at the introductory phase (I found neither manual nor help, I'll apreciate if someone posts a related link). The others show very nice gui's and support drag and drop ability, but revealed a litle buggy. For exemple, Endeavour showed part of my mp3 as executable files! with no apparent and easy solution. Rox is not as configurable as Gentoo. Both Endeavour and Rox are more memory and cpu consumers.
I'll appreciate any comment or suggestion. Thanks!
Note: I tested this programs in my newer machine, mandrake is not yet installed in the older one.