[PLUG] Looking at distros for old desktops

[Arindam]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 10:48 AM, Aditya Godbole <aag.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 12:53 AM, Arindam <arindam.mukerjee at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have some aging / old desktops for which I am looking for
>> appropriate distributions. I intend to use them as developer systems
>> for some kernel development (noo-b there, modest intentions) but
>> prefer an X installation.
>>
>
> For a 'slim' distribution, I used to start with a debian base install
> and then add in whatever I wanted.
> If you are not looking for something that slim, maybe Slackware might
> be a good option.
>

Debian was the first distro I looked at for the purpose. I saw its RAM
requirements were 512 Megs (recommended) and 64 Megs minimal. Xubuntu
on my 1 Gig system takes up about 540 Megs on an idle system with no
swap used at 60% swappiness.

The other system for which I am doing this distro hunt has 512 Megs.
It tends to be a little slow with the FreeBSD 6.1 that it currently
has (this is from 2006). Given Ubuntu's similarity with Debian, was
wondering if it will be any different. Was wondering there is a distro
still around which can be trimmed adequately to be performant on this
machine.

Thanks.