Best Linux version for ancient laptop

[Mojoe134]

Hello ladies or gents, i just received an ancient, dusty, and abused Dell Inspiron 6000 from a friend of a friend.
It has a Celeron M 1.30 GHz CPU and 256MBs of DDR2 SDRAM running at 400 MHz.
I want to try out the Linux world and as soon as i peered into the deep dark cauldron of Linux "distros" i thought i got my work cut out for me. How in the heck am i suppose to sort through these things and find the best one for me.

The real question anyways is if someone could point out a fast but reliable Linux Distro that i can use to search the web, send emails, and watch Youtube with? If you could help then it would be much appreciated.
If i cant figure it out i might as well have some fun throwing it off the abandoned school's roof.

p.s. i experimented so far with peppermint which crashed the laptop and i couldnt figure out how to format Damn Small Linux.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

The only ones that will probably run with that amount of RAM would not even have a GUI - they'd be all CLI. I would try to find an old version of Ubuntu if I were you from around 2000-2004 and install that. No modern OS with a GUI will work on thos specs, but an old one will

Here, from the official site: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/4.10/

It requires 30Mb RAM, so your 256Mb is good!

 

[USAFRet]

PuppyLinux

I have that running on a PII 300Mhz Dell laptop. Slow, but it runs.

 

[Mojoe134]

@USAFRet and @turkey3_scratch
I'd like to try both, but Ret could you give me your download link there seems to be a million different ISOs for that Puppy Linux what one should i download?

 

[USAFRet]

@USAFRet and @turkey3_scratch
I'd like to try both, but Ret could you give me your download link there seems to be a million different ISOs for that Puppy Linux what one should i download?

The latest release here: http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%20Latest%20Release.htm

Which release do I have installed on my old system? No idea. It has been several years since I installed it.

 

[skittle]

Please do not use old outdated distribution! There many exist light weight modern os that will fit into 256mb ram very easily.

There are many different puppy Linux versions because puppy is so easily modifiable.

Go ahead and grab latest puppy Linux (built using Ubuntu packages) here
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-tahr/iso/tahrpup%20-6.0-CE/

You may also want to enable zram
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zram

 

[Mojoe134]

Please do not use old outdated distribution! There many exist light weight modern os that will fit into 256mb ram very easily.

There are many different puppy Linux versions because puppy is so easily modifiable.

Go ahead and grab latest puppy Linux (built using Ubuntu packages) here
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-tahr/iso/tahrpup%20-6.0-CE/

whats the difference between PAE and noPAE

 

[skittle]

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PAE

Use PAE unless your CPU doesn't support it

 

[non-smoker pete]

I also recommend Puppy Linux, but don't overlook Lubuntu, which is a light-weight version of Ubuntu, much less resource intensive than Xubuntu. Check the Puppy TimeLine to see more details about each version of Puppy:

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyTimeLine

and again, don't forget to try Lubuntu. I still keep Lubuntu 10 on a flash drive for emergencies, but I run Zorin 9 on my Dell Inspiron 6000, because it has 2 GB of RAM.

 

[retrogamer32x]

I thought I would mention a few tips, regardless of what distro you use. I'd also recommend Tiny Core by the way, although it isn't as beginner friendly.

I use an older Pentium III with Tiny Core myself (a 1.4 GHz Tualatin) and it's quite usable for surfing the web and even watching Youtube videos. They key is to use the right software. So here would be my go to applications:

1. NetSurf This is a very lightweight and fast browser. I use it to surf the web, check email and find Youtube videos, but NOT watch them. Instead, you should use:
2. LiveStreamer which will pipe the video into either VLC or MPlayer (you specify it in the command). You can also specify various video qualities, 360p should be fine for your hardware. It works with a ton of websites, including Daily Motion and Twitch, and will let you choose a quality low enough to work well with your laptop.
3. If NetSurf is somewhat slow, Dillo is an even lighter browser, it just lacks Javascript support. You can use it to check email at GMail just fine in Basic HTML mode, though.
4. XMMS is an incredibly lightweight alternative for playing your music and still very functional.
5. For a DE/Window Manager, I would recommend JWM which is Joe's Window Manager.
6. MPlayer is your best bet for a media player, just make sure to use a lightweight gui (usually called mplayer-gui as a package), not something like SMPlayer or UMPlayer.
7. I would use Ted for a word processor.

There are TONS of GUIs that will run well on your hardware, if you need more recommendations, just ask.

 

[Mohd Sohail]

There are many Light linux distributions that will fit inside an old Laptop or desktop. Some of the popular ones are, Puppy Linux, Lubuntu, Linux Light, Crunchbang++ and if the laptop is ancient then Tiny core Linux can be useful.