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Old Linux for Pentium II system?

Last I heard DSL was no longer in support. But Tiny Linux has been resurrected. Those are good alternatives for 32-bit. But not as nice to use as SuSE, or even Debian. (In my opinion).

Seaken
 
Chuck(G) said:
Is DSL Linux a current distro?
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It looks like someone *kind of* resurrected it in 2024?

Damn Small Linux, DSL 2024 Information

www.damnsmalllinux.org www.damnsmalllinux.org

Personally... while I can see the usefulness of them to some people, I get pretty frustrated with Linux projects like DSL, Tiny Core, Puppy, etc, that are baked into the "live boot" model instead of allowing them to simply be installed on to a normal hard disk partition and behave like a "normal" UNIX system, IE, not force you to use a clunky snapshot model to save any configuration changes, make installed software persistent, whatever.

In terms of "performance", well, if you just slap vanilla Debian on a system and install the same applications it'll perform the same as what you get in these micro-distributions so unless disk space is also a tight constraint there really isn't a *need* to go with one of these things. The gray area I'm referring to with the above frustration is if you need a Linux to go on something like a Netbook that may or may not have CPU as a tight constraint but a tiny built in flash/eMMC drive *is*. If you install the "normal" packages (with all the dependencies) in a standard distribution's repo you *are* going to end up with a much larger footprint than DSL/TinyCore whatever; you *can* tune things up to either not install or remove-after-the-fact "unnecessary" bloat, but it's a lot more work. Seems like there's a niche in there for someone to publish a series of "meta-packages" that could use the contents of a standard Debian or whatever to give you a disk-minimized footprint that's otherwise still a "normal" Linux, leaving out the whole memory-resident/snapshotting modifications.
 
Yes, I think that is one thing that antiX is good for. You can of course install as memory resident or with persistence. But it fully supports the good old-fashioned hard drive install. And you can start out very slim for very small hard drive spaces. Or use the persistence/live features on another machine and then create a new snapshot or "spin" that can be installed on the resource restricted machine. You can do this with straight Debian but antiX makes it easier for the casual user who may not have developer skills. Like me.

Seaken
 
I'm pretty sure the dev(s) from DSL moved on to make tinycore. Without getting into the nitpicky details, it seems like they're pretty much the same thing looking to fill the same niche.
 
seaken said:
I can't help with the period correct SuSE. But I suspect that you will not get much out of it beyond nostalgia. But if you want to actually USE the P-II then Debian may be the way to go. You can download a Debian distro with the latest kernels that support 32-bit systems. Your hardware may be hit or miss. But once you get that sorted out you can put the P-II on the internet and web and it's almost like 1999. If you are not as comfortable with setting up Debian you could use a derivative, llke antiX, to help sort out the use of Window Managers and set up a nice desktop. Debian itself is a little plain, especially in 32-bit and when compared to the old KDE and Gnome desktops. I've also used a Puppy that was specially made for old P-II and P-III machines. It is named Puppy 214X. But I doubt it is supported anymore. Debian and antiX are fully supported and modern. SuSE is supported in 32-bit with Tumbleweed but I have not been able to use it on anything less than an P-4.
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I don't really like using these old computers to do modern stuff, the Internet has gotten ruined for me and I much rather spend time offline with these things.
I do enjoy browsing sometimes TheOldNet but not often.

Certainly I do want to use it for nostalgia of what I had back in the day. It's amazing to hear you can install a currently supported Debian on such an old machine, though! Linux is just built different.
 
It has been a big part of my hobby for years to see how long I can keep an old P-III alive and "kind-of" usable in modern times. It's been interesting. I multi-boot Windows 2000 and several Linux variants. Linux is by far the most useful as far as getting on the internet. But Windows 2000 is still fun to play with offline.

Seaken
 
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