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Small linux distrubitions

peterw

New Member
I keep my old notebooks because they are cheap and small servers. They don't need much power, are silent and have keyboard, mouse and screen included. I use small linux distrubitions to run linux servers on old 256MB RAM notebooks. My IBM ThinkPad T20 with Intel Pentium III 700 MHz, 256MB RAM and DVD is not dying.

I try to cover four different linux distributions. Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, SliTaz and Tiny Core Linux.

Damn Small Linux: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

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The goal is to have a linux distribution in a 50MB package. It is based on Debian and it needs only 128MB of RAM.

DSL has a nearly complete desktop, it also has the ability to act as an SSH/FTP/HTTPD server right off of a live CD.

The desktop has XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, Netrik web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor (Ted), three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano [Pico clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript printer support, NFS, Fluxbox and JWM window managers.

A package list offers lots of additional packages. You can install DSL on hard disk too.

Puppy Linux: http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm

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The goal is to have a beginner friendly linux desktop in a 100MB package. It needs 256MB of RAM.

It is using JWM to have a Windows XP look.

There are Ubuntu and Slackware binaries available.

And there is a ARM version for RaspberryPi too: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PARM

SliTaz GNU/Linux: http://www.slitaz.org/en/about/

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The goal is to have a linux distribution in a 35MB package.

SliTaz GNU/Linux is a free operating system working completely in memory from removable media such as a cdrom or USB key.

It offers a LightTPD with CGI and PHP support, browsers (Midori or Retawq), sound support provided by Alsa mixer, audio player and CD ripper/encoder, chat, mail, FTP clients. SSH client and server powered by Dropbear.  It is usung Openbox as a desktop environment.

There are over 3000 packages available to install additional tools.

Tiny Core Linux: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/intro.html

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The goal is to have a linux distribution with no extras.

By default, Tiny Core Linux operates like a Internet client. In Default Mode Tiny Core boots entirely into RAM.

Users run the Appbrowser to browse the repository and download applications.

In Mount Mode Applications are stored locally in a directory named tce on a persistent store. Applications are optionally mounted on reboot.

I used Damn Small Linux a lot because it was the first distribution I knew. They offer lots of packages that can be installed. But the last versions of DSL are needing too much RAM. I found Puppy Linux during my search for a EeePC linux distribution, but SliTaz is now my most used linux distribtuin. It can run with 32MB of RAM in text mode.

I installed it on a sd card (frugal installation) and boot from it if I need it. You can use the Tiny SliTaz Builder: http://tiny.slitaz.org/ to create your own version of SliTaz.
 
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wlanboy

Content Contributer
Yup the good old DSL days.

A little bit outdated since Debian is running fine on the Raspberry Pi.

But the Pi does have 512 MB of RAM - so SliTaz is still good for really old laptops.

Can't believe you are still using a ThinkPad T20.
 

OffshoreBox

New Member
Verified Provider
I use Crunchbang on my old notebook. Requires ~512MB of RAM and a ~700MHz processor (Intel celeron or better).
 

jcarney1987

New Member
DSL was actually my first Linux I've ever booted into.  I thought it was pretty cool, so my adventure begin.  I've ran Puppy on a old Dell P3 with 128MB of Ram and it seem to run fast too.
 

Nikki

New Member
Alpine looks cool, how about a very very minimal command line Linux distro? I've seen basic shells at like 1.4MB, not sure if there's any other really small ones.
 
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