good linux distro for folding@home

Team Hack-a-Day has a distro for folding but I dont like that its a live-cd only. I tried installing Damn Small Linux but after selecting a screen resolution, my monitor stopped displaying.

I need a light distro (with install option) for a 766Mhz machine with 192mb ram. Maybe Puppy Linux? Anything else I could try?

 

Well, light usually means stuff with less GUI and holding-hands, just to warn you in advance.

That being said, for linux, slackware is always a good choice for lower end pcs, and vector linux which is based off slackware is quite nice while still keeping that GUI feel and use.

Arch linux is very nice as well, but I don't know if it will work on your pc since it probably is not i686, but, there is a modded version of arch called lowarch which will run on i486 which your CPU might be.

However, the best performer I have seen on low end pcs is NetBSD. It is so light, clean, and gets right to the point. It will be a bit of a learning process getting it up and running, but if it works on a toaster, then it should definitely work on your pc.

I don't know how much f@h you will accomplish with that low spec of a machine though, and you may want to consider transforming it into something like a file server, print server, firewall, or something cool in your free time.

Cheers,

Alphalutra1

 

do u know of any good distros with small(er) cd sizes?

as for teh machine, yes i know its low spec but F@H is the best use (other than getting rid of it) I can find for it.

 

Zenwalk is pretty nice and light. Uses Xfce which works well on older PCs, and should run fine in 192mb ram. Most everything works out of the box too, which is kinda rare for a Linux distro. It's very reponsive and fast here on my 1 gig cpu. Been running it for about 3 weeks now and liking it a lot. Based on Slackware I guess. The CD image is around 400mb (I think), not a full CD. All in all it might suit your needs...

Here's a link: http://www.zenwalk.org/

They have a pretty good support forum as well..

 

I will check it out, though I dont know if my proc counts as a "Pentium III class processor". If its not, would performance really suffer?

 

I think a 766mhz processor is a P III isn't it? I know my 1 gig is a P III. I think you'd be fine. I have tried literally dozens of distros in the past 6 months, and this one is one of the fastest in performance, mostly because Xfce is designed for use on machines like ours or ones with even less resources. As a GUI it's fast and light and uses much less ram than Gnome or KDE. Worth a try I would think. The installer is a little awkward in places, but once you get things up and running it's worth it. I had it installed and fully functional here in about 30 minutes.

 

This review of Zenwalk has lots of screenshots of the install process. With the latest Zenwalk release the labelling of hard drives has changed, so hda is now sda, but AFAIK everything else will be the same for the install.

Wolvix might be another candidate: http://wolvix.org/. Here's a list of the hardware requirements.