| How low can you go and still run Linux? |
Jan. 14, 2008
 Opinion -- I remember when getting a decent PC would set you back at least a grand. Then it was $500. Now, it's $150!? That's the story that small vendor LinFX wants you to buy along with its PC with pre-installed Linux.
How does LinFX manage to sell a fully operational computer with a 15-inch display for $150? Well, while the Linux distribution, PCLinuxOS 2007, is a state-of-the-art 21st century desktop Linux, the hardware, an IBM NetVista desktop with a 900MHz Intel Pentium III and 256MB of RAM, is right out of the year 2000.
Back in its day, this system ran either Windows ME or Windows 2000. Today, if you're a Windows user, it's a doorstop. For a Linux user, though, this refugee from the junkyard is actually still a useful computer.
It is not, let's be real, a good computer, but it is a decent Linux desktop PC for a user who wants no more than basic home or office applications and Internet access. It comes with a 20GB IDE hard drive, a 40x CD-ROM drive, a 100M-bps Ethernet port, keyboard, mouse and a PCLinuxOS 2007 LiveCD. For an additional $15, you can get it with 512MB of RAM.
Needless to say, since IBM got out of the PC-building business in 2005, I don't expect this deal to last for long.
Still, it does make two points. The first is one I think anyone who pays attention to Linux desktop computing knows: New, inexpensive PCs that could never run Vista do great at running Linux. Asus with its UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) Eee PC 4G and Everex with its gPC have broken the ice for brand-new PCs with low price tags.
The other point, though, is that old PCs do just fine as Linux desktops as well. I'm not talking here about PCs that can run just a CLI (command-line interface); I'm talking about computers that can run a modern graphical desktop Linux. In my own home office, I have several 1GHz systems with 256MB of RAM running OpenSUSE 10.3.
Linux manages this because even a full-blown desktop Linux, like OpenSUSE or PCLinuxOS 2007, requires far less from a PC than Vista or XP. You can push even farther into computing's past if you use a lightweight desktop Linux distribution. So, if you have a computer based on a 486, a 60Mhz Pentium or the like sitting in the attic and you'd like to give it a new lease on life, I recommend checking out one of the following Linux desktop distros.
I've always liked MEPIS for its stability, helpful user community and the way it stays current while never going over the bleeding edge of innovation, so it should come as no surprise that I also like MEPIS AntiX 7.01. This is the lightweight version of SimplyMEPIS 7.0.
It's designed to run on Intel-based PCs equipped with as little as Pentium II processors and 64MB of RAM. It does not, however, work and play well with systems using AMD K5/K6 processors. It uses the Fluxbox desktop instead of SimplyMEPIS' KDE interface. AntiX also uses lighter-weight applications than MEPIS. For example, it defaults to AbiWord for word processing instead of OpenOffice Writer 2.3.
No discussion of full lightweight Linux desktops would be complete without a mention of gOS 2.0. I've reviewed gOS 1.0 recently, and I looked at the new features of gOS 2.0 before it was officially announced, so I'll say no more here except to point out that if you do most of your work on the Internet, it's a great distribution.
The best known of the minimalist but everything-you-need Linuxes has to be Damn Small Linux. Or, as I like to call it, Damn Good Small Linux.
The entire distribution comes out to a mere 50MB. Tiny size and all, it still uses the Fluxbox GUI for its desktop. That said, with this distribution you're still going to find yourself using CLI applications a lot of the time. On the other hand, you can run it on slow 486 systems with 16MB of RAM. It also makes an excellent system repair operating system since you can boot it from almost anything. While I don't have systems running it on a regular basis, I always keep a current copy around for system fix-ups.
Zenwalk 4.8 isn't an especially well-known Linux distribution, but it deserves more attention. This Xfce-based distribution isn't quite as light as the others. Its creators recommend that you use it with a Pentium III or better system, although I've used it successfully on Pentium II systems.
One thing I like about Zenwalk for new Linux users is that, unlike many "kitchen sink" distributions, Zenwalk comes with a single application for each use. So, for example, Zenwalk uses Gnome Office applications--AbiWord word processor, Gnumeric spreadsheet and the GNOME-DB database front end--instead of offering users three or four office suite choices. You might disagree with their choices, but making things simple for new users makes good sense to me.
Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the PCLinuxOS community has just come out with its own lightweight distribution, MiniMe 2008. This is a KDE-based Linux desktop and essentially it's a stripped-down version of PCLinuxOS 2007.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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