UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hey guys, this is my first time posting here (although I've been reading the forums for a while now). I'm looking for a good UNIX (or UNIX based/UNIX-like) distro to install on an old Dell Dimension 2400 Destop. I've done ALOT of research on the different distros and I've tried a few out but I was wondering which would be best for what I want to do. I want to use the machine for programming, light internet/e-mail use, and web design. A nice, clean, customizable (but semi-lightweight) desktop environment would be ideal. It's hard finding distros compatible with my machine, but here are the ones I've tried:

- FreeBsd 9.1: This was the most successful one so far. Everything went smoothly but Xorg was very bland and installing Gnome or KDE on it didn't work either. If I had to go back to this I would.

- Ubuntu 12.10: Gave me so many issues. Came to the conclusion my machine was to old to run it.

- Mint 14: Same as Ubuntu. Did not work.

- Xubuntu 12.10 - Currently running. Not 100% impressed, a little sluggish.


And here's my computer specs:

Processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz
RAM 1 GB

PCI Devices

Host bridge Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 01)
VGA compatible controller Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
USB controller Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
USB controller Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
USB controller Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
USB controller Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
PCI bridge Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 81) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
ISA bridge Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
IDE interface Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
SMBus Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
Multimedia audio controller Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
Modem Broadcom Corporation BCM4212 v.90 56k modem (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
Ethernet controller Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T (rev 01)

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SCSI Disks

ATA ST340014A
HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8163B
SAMSUNG CD-R/RW SW-248F

A no frills no spills Linux based setup would be Debian 6.0.x...

It is super stable and I use it as my main OS on my HP notebook in Gnome desktop guise, along with PCLinuxOS 2009 in KDE desktop guise, a little old now but hyper-stable on my AA1 netbook...

Debian is about ready for its next reincarnation but PCLinuxOS has been updated many times since my version above...

Of course this is subjective but I have used a few variants and these work "out of the box"...

Thanks for the advice! I'm currently trying to install Debian 6.0.6 via bootable USB, and when I get to the installer boot menu, both the 'Install' and 'Graphical install' options cause my computer to freeze at the boot menu. Any ideas as to what is causing this?

You are obviously looking for a resource-saving OS. My suggestion is to use the FreeBSD you already tried and fine-tune X-Windows with a window-manager of your choice, but stay away from the "Desktops".

I have to admit that i hate desktops with a passion because all (regardless of being KDE, GNOME or whatever i have come across) are power-hungry monsters which mostly do what their creators suppose to be cool instead of what i want. My system of choice is a native X and mwm (Motif Window Manager) on top. mwm is simple to configure, there is exactly one file: "~/.mwmrc", which contains the main menu, which pops up if you right-click into the root window. IMHO this is all the GUI one needs. I despise all the toolbars, icons and whatnot, which is just cluttering my valuable monitor area.

If you want a window manager with a little more functionality you might consider "fvwm", but you will have to (re-)write a 50kbyte-config-file and i never bothered to learn the myriads of keywords and what irrelevant behavior they control. Still, fvwm has a very small footprint compared to monsters like compiz and the like. Yes, it (like mwm too) can't create half-transparent octagonal terminal windows which wobble if you touch them with the mouse and have a 3-D image in true-colour as background, but, honestly, my work as sysadmin has rarely suffered from this shortcoming. An xterm with a solid background and a well readable font in one colour is perfectly enough for my simple taste.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

I completely agree with you her bakunin, I found openlook was quite good for limited resource also but got where now?...
The other alternative would be to get a knoppix 4, and get your installation done from that (or anything above 3.3 but less than 4.5).. you will find yourself with a debian... Excellent for learning ( the hard way?) I say it works because I did it some time ago (3 years or more) on a HP vl3 almos same CPU but 500mb ram and it worked quite well, but if you abuse of X stuff running you may overload the moachine that will start swapping like mad to a point you loose control...

I would go with debian minimal install, then configure further per your requirments.

Go with lxde or xmonad if you can get used to tiling window managers.

Hi Pyramist...

Does the bootable USB startup in Live mode. If not, try and obtain a cut down Live CD version. As your machine is around 8 years old now USB might be a little flaky as it had not matured enough at that time. I suspect your machine will NOT be able to boot from a DVD but you could try it.

Also ACPI can give some problems on older machines.

If you get a blank black srceen then try to _force_ the installation to use VESA video modes as these are, _in_theory_ backwards compatible...

Other than that it is difficult to diagnose without seing the event(s) with one's own eyes...

Bazza, G0LCU...