[TheDope]

I salvaged a Dell Optiplex GX1 from a Kmart pharmacy about a year ago. It has a Pentium II processor 349 Mhz, and had 64 Mb memory to which I have added two 128 Mb sticks for current total of 318 mb. Max memory is 768 Mb.

I downloaded Suse Linux 10.2 and installed it a couple days ago. Running very slowly. System shows only 34 mb free memory. The HD (slow & clunky) shows 696 mb free. I'm toying with adding another 256 mb memory, and I have a 40 Gb HD from an Emachines that went south.

I could assemble a new machine, but just want to play with the old Dell. What are the chances that it would make a halfway decent Linux box with these mods?? Thanks for any advice.

Correction: max memory = 384 mb, so I can only add 128 if I toss the 64.

[bigbear]

You can try more memory, I think you might be better off trying a less demanding distro.
Suse 10.2 is fairly new, try one of the smaller less demanding distros like Puppy or Damn Small
http://distrowatch.com/

[AGCurry]

If you don't ask the computer to do the GUI, Linux should run nicely on slow processors and little memory...

[vtel57]

Try Xubuntu with the alternate install CD.

http://www.xubuntu.org/

Luck!

[TheDope]

Thanks for the replies. Actually, I don't think there's much to improve on in the old dell, and my Linuxs of choice are Suse and Slackware. I'll just fool around with both using a barebones GUI.

[fenderfreek]

Don't give up yet. As of right now, I have 2 of those exact machines running( except mine are 500mhz), and I'm posting from one running Kubuntu. This one is loaded with 512 Mb of RAM and 2 x 250Gb Hard Drives, so it doubles as my server. Everything runs smoothly, with minimal slowdown. The other GX1 I have has a mere 6Gb HDD and 256Mb of RAM, running Ubuntu, and works nearly as well. It's used mostly for browsing the internet and being a Media Center in the Living Room.

The GX1 isn't the hottest thing to hit the market, but I got both of mine for free and I use them waay more than I use my brand new laptop. Just upgrade that memory, try getting a faster/bigger hard drive, and with a bit of TLC, you can turn it around.

[TheDope]

Just installed 128mb ram which now puts it at the limit. There is a noticable, but not impressive, speed increase in Suse. Will try the new HD next.