How does this prefrom on Slower machines
 

I am looking to set up a small file server for my home network using a old computer (100 to 233 Mhz 16 to 64 mb of ram) and i was looking for something that i could run ICEWM or another basic window maker on so i could use SWAT if i needed to. I am still rather new so i would like to use a GUI based OS to fall back on if needed. Would vector do this well?

Vector would in fact be a very good choice for this type of setup, as would many other distros. It would perform best if you installed the absolute minimum and built in what you needed as you go, no extras. Samba should be very easy to use without the window manager, and a new install is a great time to really dive in head first without a gui; thus maximizing your resources.

Vector would do the job just fine. Something else to consider though is Red Hat 9. You're already semi familiar with red hat as your profile say you use RH8, and there is an install option that is a command line only server environment, which should be easy to add IceWM to.

The only issue to consider is that if you will be having this box at all on the net, RH will no longer be supplying errata, thus making it vulnerable. If this box is going to be sitting on your lan with no net connectivity and just serving files, RH9 will do the job nicely as Burnpile said.

vector will run smoothly on your hardware as i have it running on a p1 nobo and heard of people running it on a 486. as it will be your fileserver, you shouldn´t have any speed problems.


best,



ps the brave must win--and the brave is red!

I actually have it on a 486, and it is as smooth as it could be :)

yeah, vector is great! i get convinced by its speed every time i use it ...



ps the brave must win--and the brave is red!

I use VL 4 on an old machine and it's really brought it back to life.

If you plan to use Samba and SWAT on your home network (which I assume has a decent firewall to the net) then you could configure SWAT to use the NIC instead of the loopback interface. By doing that, you could use the web browser on any computer in your home network to configure Samba. Then you don't need X at all on the server. Do I need to mention that this solution has some security implications? ;)

Regards
Martin

good call MartinN

i have dial up as nothing better is available where i live. I will get myself a copy of vector then. Thanks guys

I rebuild trashed PI's, down to 166, 32 mb edo ram. Runs fine in Icewm, Abiword works well and is surprisingly responsive. Anything KDE related reallllly takes a long time to load.

Maybe it's just me, but I have an old celeron 433, with 64 mb of memory, and it ran very slow with Redhat 9, vectorlinux and peanut linux.....it doesn't run very fast on windows, but it's not as slow as it goes on linux

Check my "WWW" button. 100MZ Pentium, 64MB RAM. When I first started fooling with it the Ram had not been upgraded and still had the original 16MB. That was before it went live.
It is a minimal Debian install plus anything I want. No GUI. There are actually nice tools that can be used instead. Webmin is nice. A lot can be done connecting VIA ssh, and mc makes file browsing easy.

my experience
 

I installed an older version of vector an a 75mhz pentium with 40mb ram.

It wasn't exactly a speed demon, but the speed was acceptable. Win95 was installed on the PC previously. I would say that win95 ran faster, but vector was comparible.

indeed, often it is comparable, but wait till you put some more RAM in it. If you want to get a lot out of Linux on a slow pc often you should get some more ram and the old SDRAM is so cheap nowadays ;)