[GLLUG] Linux or Windows ?

[Richard Houser]

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Douglas Chapin wrote:
| I want to  change to a smaller imprint on my HD  Would a Linux OS Help
| I have a 6 GB hd  and XP is just taking up too much space & resource's

| OS Name    Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
| Processor    x86 Family 6 Model 6 Stepping 10 GenuineIntel ~363 Mhz
| Total Physical Memory    128.00 MB



Many organizations consider 256MB of RAM and 10GB of disk space on a
400MHz PII class machine to be the minimum configuration to run XP with
one light application (like a 2002 era web browser) without excessive
runtime delays for a user.

A reasonable selection of a Linux distribution will run relatively
snappy (with one to three concurrent users) on this hardware and can
easily fit in well under 1GB of disk space (including basic
applications).  Several years ago, my main machine that I ran three
graphical consoles (KDE) from was a 450Mhz K6-2 with 256MB of RAM.  I
also had some single general purpose remote business user installs about
three years ago on 1.2GB hard disks (with 500+MB to spare for user data).

Your hardware CAN run a window manager like KDE, but for best results
pick something a little lighter like IceWM.  Please note that this
hardware is too slow to get all the eyecandy at a Vista/Mac OS-X level,
so it would be easiest for you to pick a distribution geared at older
hardware (like DSL, fluxbuntu, etc.).  Picking a distribution geared at
more modern hardware (Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora Core, etc.) would still
work, but would create a lot of additional administration work to get
the install trimmed down.

It's been a while since I used any of the less resource-intensive
distributions on the x86 architecture outside of live-cds.  Anyone have
a particular recommendation for a disk-based install?
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