Question Best version of Linux for dual pentium III?

[Matthew Renna]

Hello all,
I have a machine with dual pentium IIIs at 1ghz, 4 gigs of sdram, and a 8400 gs pci. It’s got triple scsi drives in raid 0.
What would be a good version of linux that could also run steam?

I’m trying to see if some older games can run on it, but with steam getting rid of win 7 support I can’t try windows anymore

 

[TerryLaze]

You would have to run steamOS which I doubt very much would run on an system that old.
ChimeraOS also has steam support, also probably won't run.

The games that are old enough to run on an system that old will most probably not have any DRM even on steam (many are dosbox packages) so you could download them on a different system, copy them over, and just see if they will run without steam.

 

[Grobe]

I'd suggest Bunsenlabs Linux - this is my favorite 32 bit distro, because it's just the right balance between being light/fast and still have a decent desktop environoment . It's based on Debian (actually most 32bit Linux distros are) and still have support for x86 CPU's.

Then you have Linux Mint having a very decent 32 bit Debian based distro. This however runs the Cinnamon desktop and therefore is often eats too much ram for many 32 bit systems. In your case, Cinnamon shouldn't have issues with ram (takes about 1.2GB of ram after OS installed last time I checked while Bunsenlabs takes about a third of this).

There is also this french Emmabuntus distro, also Debian based. This one is quite loaded with various programs preinstalled and also give you a choice on startup between two desktop environments. I've never actually installed this distro on a computer, but have tested it in Live desktop mode.

Open Suse also have a 32 bit distro, but somehow I haven't get it to boot properly on any of my old 32 bit computers.

 

[Matthew Renna]

You would have to run steamOS which I doubt very much would run on an system that old.
ChimeraOS also has steam support, also probably won't run.

The games that are old enough to run on an system that old will most probably not have any DRM even on steam (many are dosbox packages) so you could download them on a different system, copy them over, and just see if they will run without steam.

Hmm, that’s not a bad idea. I was looking at requirements, I thought ubuntu would be able to run on my system?

 

[Matthew Renna]

I'd suggest Bunsenlabs Linux - this is my favorite 32 bit distro, because it's just the right balance between being light/fast and still have a decent desktop environoment . It's based on Debian (actually most 32bit Linux distros are) and still have support for x86 CPU's.

Then you have Linux Mint having a very decent 32 bit Debian based distro. This however runs the Cinnamon desktop and therefore is often eats too much ram for many 32 bit systems. In your case, Cinnamon shouldn't have issues with ram (takes about 1.2GB of ram after OS installed last time I checked while Bunsenlabs takes about a third of this).

There is also this french Emmabuntus distro, also Debian based. This one is quite loaded with various programs preinstalled and also give you a choice on startup between two desktop environments. I've never actually installed this distro on a computer, but have tested it in Live desktop mode.

Open Suse also have a 32 bit distro, but somehow I haven't get it to boot properly on any of my old 32 bit computers.

Hmm, I’ll give it a shot! How about unubtu?

 

[Grobe]

Hmm, I’ll give it a shot! How about unubtu?

Ubuntu you mean? They doesn't have a 32 bit distro any longer. The last version with 32 bit support was 18.04 and I think that version it is not supported any more.

 

[Matthew Renna]

Ubuntu you mean? They doesn't have a 32 bit distro any longer. The last version with 32 bit support was 18.04 and I think that version it is not supported any more.

Ubuntu yes hahaha, and huh, gotcha. I’ll try the first one that you recommended.