New to Linux

Hi everyone and thanks in adviance for your help:

Need help with my choise and instalasation - here's the info:

I am on a new Vista laptop for downloading - it is not my pc and will
be staying a Vista pc. I use the Vista only for the net.

I have a old Compaq Presareo I want to work on for school,
entertanment, and business.

It runs a AMD 3D proc. (speed unknown), about 10GB Hard Drive, and
(hope your sitting down) 60MB of Memory. It had a CD-ROM player, a 3
1/2 Flopy, and a USB-1.

I want to share data threw USB Mini-SD Thum Drives so I'll need a
driver (right?), I want a word proceser (suprize), Calculaters, CNC
controlers, CAD, and some games to distract when nesisary.

Ok I think that covers it.

On Tuesday 01 September 2009 16:26, someone identifying as *The
BriZZell* wrote in /comp.os.linux.setup:/

> I have a old Compaq Presareo I want to work on for school,
> entertanment, and business.
>
> It runs a AMD 3D proc. (speed unknown), [...

Most 32-bit distributions these days are now optimized for /i686/ - i.e.
Intel Pentium Pro, Pentium II/III/4 and Celerons, and AMD
K7/Athlon/AthlonXP/AthlonMP - but if your processor is an AMD K5, K6,
K6-II or K6-III then you need a distribution that's still optimized
for /i586./

There still are quite a few of those, but you'll have to look around.

> ...] about 10GB Hard Drive, [...

That's very tight. You might get away with Damn Small Linux, but then
still there would be very little room left for your own personal files.

> ...] and (hope your sitting down) 60MB of Memory.

That's too tight. The absolute recommended minimum these days for a
system without an X server running - i.e. character mode only - is 64
MB. If you want to run X11 on top of that, then even with the lightest
of window managers you would still need about 196-256 MB of RAM to do
anything productive.

> It had a CD-ROM player, a 3 1/2 Flopy, and a USB-1.
>
> I want to share data threw USB Mini-SD Thum Drives so I'll need a
> driver (right?),

USB storage has already been supported for a long time in just about
every stock distro kernel. You don't need to load a separate driver
for that. They are detected by the system and seen as removable
storage.

> I want a word proceser (suprize), Calculaters, [...

Just about every distribution has those, but your hardware is just not
powerful enough to handle a complex wordprocessor, especially not one
that has WYSIWYG capabilities, because you don't even have enough RAM
to smoothly run a character mode-only system, let alone that you'd have
enough RAM to start an X11 session.

> ...] CNC controlers, CAD, and some games to distract when nesisary.

Every distribution comes with games of all sorts, but CNC controllers
and CAD are typically not Free & Open Source Software, with a few
exceptions, but these are typically not supplied as part of any distro
I know of. Such programs also require far more memory than your
machine has installed.

The bottom line, I'm afraid, is that you're going to need a much more
recent/powerful machine than that Compaq for the intended purposes you
have in mind.

Hope this helps.
--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)