A review of live CD linux distros on a 451 MHz Pentium II PC

Do you have an old clunker computer? I have heard that Microsoft may be making available a special version of its operating system available to those who bought some kind of protection plan from them, one designed to work well on older computers. I say why not try a live linux CD for free? You can also try live CD's with little risk to your underlying windows installation.

This round of testing was done on my father-in-law's computer, an Aptiva with a 451 MHz Pentium II processor and 254772 MB of memory. The computer was plugged into a DSL internet connection that had been shown to work in Windows before, during and after this round of testing. The main criteria were the following:

1. Does it boot?
2. Does it connect to the internet using the existing DSL wiring, with no intervention other than loading a browser app?
3. Can I ever get to the underlying files on the hard disk of the computer?
4. Will it read a USB stick, a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 256 MB device that was left plugged into a USB port during the entire set of testing?
5. Does it exit or shutdown gracefully?
6. Are there any other applications of note on this CD?

Belenix 0.4.4 (strictly speaking, an Open Solaris distro)

1. During boot up, got stuck in an endless loop of "Init (IM) exited on fatal signal 9: restarting automatically"

DSL-N 0.01 RC2 (Damn Small Linux- Not!)

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD, after using EFELM to mount the device
4. Read files from the USB stick, after using EFELM to mount the device.
5. Exited well.
6. Not many apps, but that's this distro's aim: to be small.

DSL 3.0 RC1 (Damn Small Linux)

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD, after using EFELM to mount the device
4. Read files from the USB stick, after using EFELM to mount the device.
5. Exited well.
6. Not many apps, but that's this distro's aim: to be small.

Dyne 2.1

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD.
4. Would not read files from the USB stick.
5. Exited gracefully
6. Has Blender, which did a successful render. Has GIMP.

Frenzy 1.0 (strictly speaking, a BSD distro

1. Booted with the command of "startx".
2. Internet never worked.
3. Read files from the HDD using the MTOOLS FM app.
4. Read files from the USB stick.
5. Exited well with reboot command.
6. Not many apps for the graphics afficiando.

Kanotix 2006-Easter-RC4

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD, after as su, using mount /dev/hda1 command.
4. Read files from the USB stick, after my mount command for the HDD.
5. Exited well.
6. Has GIMP.

Knoppix 4.0 DVD-EN

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD, after as su, using mount /dev/hda1 command.
4. Read files from the USB stick, after my mount command for the HDD.
5. Exited well.
6. Has GIMP and Blender-- blender renders well.

Mediainlinux 4 RC5

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD, after as su, using mount /dev/hda1 command.
4. Read files from the USB stick, after my mount command for the HDD.
5. Exited well.
6. Has GIMP, povray, and Blender-- blender renders well.

MPentoo -2006

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD, after using mount command.
4. Read files from the USB stick.
5. Exited well.
6. Not many apps for the graphics afficiando.

OpenLab 4.1 alpha release

1. During boot up, got stuck with error message of "Graphics configuration has failed. Either you have no supported graphics or no mode selected."

RR4 Linux 3.0 RC1

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD, even using mount commands
4. Read files from the USB stick.
5. Did not exit gracefully-- went back into a reboot of itself.
6. Has Google Earth, which never launched. Has Blender, which never launched. Also noted that this one went quite slow on this computer.

RR4 Linux 3.0 RC1 mini

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Couldn't read files from the HDD, even using mount commands
4. Read files from the USB stick
5. Did not exit gracefully-- went back into a reboot of itself.
6. Has Google Earth, which never launched.

Simply MEPIS 6.0-rc3

1. Booted with one row of icons half-off the screen.
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD, after as su, using mount /dev/hda1 command.
4. Read files from the USB stick.
5. Exited well with reboot command.
6. Has Xara LX

Slax - Kill Bill 5.1.6

1. Boots!
2. Internet worked.
3. Read files from the HDD.
4. Read files from the USB stick.
5. Exited well with reboot command.
6. Not many apps for the graphics afficiando.

Conclusions

The winners of this test can be broken down into four categories:

• The Unexcusably Boring

  MPentoo and Slax do acceptably well on this older computer, I just found the lackluster application list to be quite boring

• The Excusably Boring

  The products of the damnsmallinux group are lacking in apps, but you gotta forgive them-- they're making a distro with 80 MB or less!

• The Technically Astute

  Kanotix 2006-Easter-RC4 impresses me as perhaps one of the better distros for a rescue situation, and it does have GIMP!

• The Graphics Sweeties

Knoppix and Mediainlinux do exceptionally well at all these tasks, and come with enough software, including graphics apps, to choke a horse. These are officially the winners here today. Mediainlinux even comes with povray (albeit completely lacking scene files). Mediainlinux gives one almost enough reason to start liking Gnome :) .