Pentium III and Linux distro?

Hagar · 24 Jan 2012 at 20:35

I have been given a pentium III computer 550 katmai CPU, I am upgrading it to Coppermine 1.0GHz (£4.99) as it is an apollo 133A chipset and also adding 1.5Gb SDRAM (£7.50). I intend to add my 250Gb IDE drive to what else is already there and run Linux. It has a 2x AGP Rage graphics card and an antique Voodoo 2 3dfx card.

Any thoughts on a good distro for this? I do not want to run windows at all.

masterluke · 25 Jan 2012 at 10:57

crunchbang or lubuntu would be a good start

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2012 at 10:59

* subscribed *

MasterPlan1 · 25 Jan 2012 at 12:55

Install 2000 and you've got my Q3 machine of 12yrs ago.

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2012 at 12:57

MasterPlan1 said:
Install 2000 and you've got my Q3 machine of 12yrs ago.

OP Resist this hypocrisy.... Get yourself a hardware accelerated Nvidia GPU and you'll be laughing on linux

Hagar · 25 Jan 2012 at 13:32

Subliminal Aura said:
OP Resist this hypocrisy.... Get yourself a hardware accelerated Nvidia GPU and you'll be laughing on linux

Funnily enough it does have 2000 on (not for long). Yes, this is Linux all the way. I did use Linux a few years ago probably on a later machine than this, but the spec 1Ghz, 1.5Gb etc. sounded reasonable and I shall look out for a GPU.

I have a Radeon 7000 32Mb PCI or the aforementioned AGP card just to get up and running. This is a budget box and am aiming to come in at about £50-60 so any thoughts on a specific model for ~£50 or less would be good. Geforce 6 or poss 7.

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2012 at 13:45

Yeah there's supposed to be a kick arse nvidia PCI card that was released last quarter but for the love of life I can't remember what it is.

Avoid those old gen cards dude. You want as much processing on the gpu as possible otherwise you're going to struggle watching youtube etc

EDIT For linux you want one of these cards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2012 at 13:48

FOUND IT !

http://www.techpowerup.com/152701/Z...20-in-PCI-and-PCIe-x1-Interface-Variants.html

GT520 in PCI form

Bit pricey at 50quid though

Woden · 25 Jan 2012 at 13:51

I would put Gentoo on it. Source based, and no automated installer so it will take *days* to get up to a day-to-day usable state, but you can get it to be very lean.

PermaBanned · 25 Jan 2012 at 14:22

Or Arch, if you can learn how to use a tiling wm you're laughing.

Woden · 25 Jan 2012 at 14:23

PermaBanned said:
Or Arch, if you can learn how to use a tiling wm you're laughing.

XMonad user here

Well, not atm, this is my dads laptop on Win7 lol

masterluke · 25 Jan 2012 at 14:30

You want an 8400gs. I picked one up for peanuts and they have hardware hidef decoding via vdpau under linux.

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2012 at 14:34

masterluke said:
You want an 8400gs. I picked one up for peanuts and they have hardware hidef decoding via vdpau under linux.

Yes, this is one of my fave budget cards of maybe all time but you can't get it in agp or pci - or can you ?!

masterluke · 25 Jan 2012 at 14:35

I know they were available at one point in AGP, but I'm actually looking now and I cant see any

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2012 at 14:37

masterluke said:
I know they were available at one point in AGP, but I'm actually looking now and I cant see any

Also note that you want the g98 core

Really love these cards ... At one point I had a stash of 5 of them

masterluke · 25 Jan 2012 at 14:46

I preume the machine has pci slots? You can get an 8400GS 512MB in pci new for a shade over 40 quid or you can get a Zotac GT 520 512MB in pci for a shade over 50 quid.

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2012 at 14:56

Damn that's pricey for an 8400gs. I pay no more than a tenner for a pci-e version.

EDIT My bad the zotac that I was looking at is PCI-e

Subliminal Aura · 25 Jan 2012 at 15:02

Overall if you're going to shell out 50quid for a graphics card why not instead dump the platform and buy an ION-ITX .... seen some go pretty cheap on MM

Hagar · 25 Jan 2012 at 17:14

Subliminal Aura said:
Overall if you're going to shell out 50quid for a graphics card why not instead dump the platform and buy an ION-ITX .... seen some go pretty cheap on MM

No I am not going to shell out hugely for GFX card. Could just dump it but I have spent £12.50 on it (last of the big spenders heh). Anyway I like playing around with different stuff and I do not really need another computer

Will look out for a super cheapo 8400GS, may take a short while, thanks to all for advice on this thread,

andy.

hanluc · 25 Jan 2012 at 19:01

nkata said:
I have been given a pentium III computer 550 katmai CPU, I am upgrading it to Coppermine 1.0GHz (£4.99) as it is an apollo 133A chipset and also adding 1.5Gb SDRAM (£7.50). I intend to add my 250Gb IDE drive to what else is already there and run Linux. It has a 2x AGP Rage graphics card and an antique Voodoo 2 3dfx card.

Any thoughts on a good distro for this? I do not want to run windows at all.

I have a P3 1ghz machine myself running PCLinuxOS LXDE lightweight, and it's running very well indeed