Linux distro?

E

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Baron O'Beefdip
Joined
Feb 1, 2008
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3,596
Okay so I'm looking for a good Linux distro that I can partition onto my old computer. I'd like it to be not too big, since I'm going to use it primarily for Perl and UNIX coding anyway (nano ftw). Anyone got a good one to recommend? Ones like Ubuntu and Debian seem mostly excessive for what I'm doing with it, but Fedora looks plausible.
 
Well, how light are you wanting? There is a super light distro called DSL. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

I've never worked with it before. I mostly play with my Linux, therefore Ubuntu and OpenSuse are more along my tastes.
 
For starters i strongly recommend pclinuxos 2008, its an awesome looking os that has most of the programs already preinstalled and it should cater to older pcs very well. if not ubuntu is a great option
 
I would go Fedora Core (newest available). Even though Fedora Core is a test platform for RedHat its still nice.

No matter what you get though if you want it light just install it sans the GUI. If you know Linux well enough you might like it more that way. Nice light and fairly standardized.
 
Fedora Core if you want a semi desktop experience.

Arch linux if you want really light weight and have a general idea of what you are doing
 
Ones like Ubuntu and Debian seem mostly excessive for what I'm doing with it, but Fedora looks plausible.
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I have both Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 installed on my system. I can tell you right now that if you want something lighter then Ubuntu is a better choice. My Fedora install was over 4GB while Ubuntu was only 2GB. Sure, that doesn't have the development tools but you can get them by just running "sudo apt-get install build-essential" and it's certainly not going to be several gigs (or even a single gig) for the development tools.

If you REALLY want small, try DSL like xeno said. You might always want to look at slax. I guess it depends on how small is small? If you are worried about the Illuminati watching your keystrokes you can always get Tinfoil Hat Linux!

http://tinfoilhat.shmoo.com/

:D (As far as I can tell it's more of a joke taken too far than anything. It does indeed boot from a 1.44 MB floppy though. I have a copy of it right here!)
 
If you want stable, check out centos.org - they repackage RedHat Enterprise and give it away. I use it on everything here and love it.
 
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