nixCraft

Hello all,
It’s a nice feeling entering Linux OS community for the first time, especially because I am on a serious task to switch all computers from my office from commercial OS like Windows XP SP2 to some good Linux distro.
I hope and I am sure I’ll have good and useful time in here.
Now, I would like to mention what exactly I need help with.
I am managing an NGO office with less then 10 quite old machines. And the average computer power is: AMD Athlon 600MHz with 256-512 RAM.
Unfortunately there is no plan to upgrade hardware in the near future, and yet I have to do the switch to Linux for licensing reasons.
Could you Linux gurus advice me what is the best and most user-friendly Linux distro for an Athlon 600MHz machine?
I would like to mention that it would be nice from all those many Linux distros available out there to install a distro that is really compatible with most device drivers and has lots of software available for it, so I will not have to spend the first half of the day installing a printer driver, and the second half trying to find a Linux compatible software for doing some simple tasks.
Thanks you very much in advance and best regards.
Cheers everyone!

Welcome to forum!

You need to use Dam Small Linux - a free Linux distribution for the X86 family of personal computers. It was designed to run graphical applications on older PC hardware -- for example, machines with 486/early Pentium processors and very little memory. DSL is a LiveCD with a size of 50 MB. What originally started as an experiment to see how much software could fit in 50 MB eventually became a full-fledged Linux distribution. It can be installed on storage media with small capacities, like bootable business cards, USB flash drives, various memory cards, and Zip drives.

Download & other info @ official project website: DSL information

__________________
Rocky Jr.
You may have my body & soul, but you will never touch my pride!

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.

Certified to work on HP-UX / Sun Solaris / RedHat

Thanks.
I see this advice quite often. Probably its "the one".

Hi again,
Considering forum info and many articles I have read I have come with a few selected distros.
I would really appreciate if you could help me by pointing me to one of these distros to be installed on machines with Athlon 600MHz CPU with RAM varying from 256 to 512 and HDs from 40 to 80GB.
Here are the distros choose by me:
Xubuntu
Vector Linux
Puppy Linux
Ubuntu 6.06
Slackware 10.2
Fluxbuntu
Which one do you recommend me to use?
Also I would like to use this opportunity for finding what is the best alternative for Microsoft Office (especially Word, Excel, PowerPoint) if using Linux, and does Linux accept lets say Office 2000 at all? I have 10 machines license for Microsoft Office 2000, and was wondering if Linux accept that software?
Thanks again to everyone helping me with this transition.
Regards

one word answer "LinuxFromScratch"
long answer?

first get info about your PC and/or LAN and/or cluster and/or network and/or et al.

second remove those skinny ideas like becoming a super man. superman died after 3 hours of battle with his planet enemies and we left the movie theatre.

third, what you can do, note it down and save it in a paper. think what you intend to do. look for answers and stop asking questions which been answered again and again and again. there is no such thing as best linux distro, or one size fits all. if you dont like it? MAKE IT YOURSELF (MIY) or DO IT YOURSELF (DIY).

fourth, its your PC and you know your stuffs more than anyone else. when ever you feel like you saw some e-X-otic idea in your cranium? immediately look for the answers than asking others, play safe and use rubber when this kind of thoughts arrive.

people in LFS have compiled gcc/binutils/glibc for 3 days on a 486-dx you follow the white rabbit, Neo-Anderson, agent smith is behind . so with a 600 mhz you should be done with LFS in ........... (fill the dots with a specific time frame as per your effort.)
URL:Redirect

god - nietze is dead.
nietze - god is dead.

Thanks for clear reply bro.
After some more learning i have finally stopped my choice on Vector Linux, and may be later i will digest Xubuntu Linux as well.
Regards.

i gotta hang out in forums for next 2 days, 2 of my hdd's are severely damaged and i need to get them replaced. seagate said i can recover the data from outside as i have the data encrypted and they got no clue how to recover it. so next 2 days? no hard work!
may be i can get one or two usb drives new and install BSD and play along.
keep it knocking off! again and again. i make mistakes i learn where i did it and how to fix it and why not to make them again.
best distro? - "YOUR DISTRO"