i have an old 133 mhz pentium, 32 megs of memory or more, i cant really remember right now, pc laying around that i would like to turn into a testing server. i would like to be able to host a small webpage from it (apache). this will all be primarily for learning purposes. i would like the os to include a gui that didnt take up alot of system resources but command line could also work (if the os comes with some good documentation) which os do you guys and girls recommend?

well, you could try Gentoo, and only compile the things you need... e.g. apache (though, it would take a long time to compile stuff on a 133)

I would say to take a look at Slackware (yeah my usual recommendation but bear with me)...

http://www.slackware.org

It's a really good distrabution for running on older hardware. Everything in Slackware can easily be done via the command line (and there is a lot of Linux command line documentation out there, much of it is very good). The distro is focused on stability, simplicity, and security (I know I say this whenever I talk about Slackware... sue me).

It lives up to all of those. The software that ships with Slackware is, for the most part, very stable. All the tools are command line based so you don't actually need a GUI (resource intensive, bad for older hardware for the most part) to do things. Also security updates are out as soon as humanly possible.

With 133MHz and 32MB of RAM then you'd better believe it's going to be command line.

Most distros should work. You'll just need to keep it basic.

I would have to go against this advice, why waste all that time compiling to the same architecure many other distros already provide?

because the compiled code should run faster because it will be optimised for his system

I would go against Gentoo as the compiling will take forever to finish.

If you are into Open Source, you should try an older version of Slackware (version 7.x) because it provides much better hardware support. Newer kernel doesn't seem to support as many old hardwares as it should.

If I were you, I would bust out Windows NT 4 with all the latest service pack (SP6...) and patches. Honestly, NT4 GUI should not take up too much resources.

Another recommendation for "not Gentoo", unless you do the version that you don't have to compile.

Any current distro would work great, and I would also not recommend WinNT4 (obsolete and you would have to pay to have it properly licensed).

As for a GUI, don't put a GUI on your box, but install something like webmin, which will allow you to have a web GUI access to the server from another box on your network running a browser. Very little server resources taken up with that!

You could try something like DamnSmall Linux. Its Debian based so adding what ever server software you need should be pretty easy.

I jsut setup FreeBSD on a similar machine for the same purpose. I am planning on using it for a moblog type server eventually.

But I'm thinking about switching over to DSL because it appears to be very easy to get where I want. There is a tutorial on this board on setting it up. Seems pretty short. Right now I have everything running on BSD but PHP doesn't seem to work. It won't render pages. Likely something I have failed to do as I'm a newb at unix.

Edit: BTW, you can use Putty to SSH in to the linux/unix box and do everything. You don't even need anything hooked to the computer. No monitor / keyboard / mouse.

All distributions compile for the i386. Some compile for i586 (mandrake and others). Original Pentiums don't contain additional instruction sets, merely faster clockspeeds and a FPU. Compiling Gentoo for this architecture would be a lesson in futility, as well as patience.

Save yourself a huge ass headache and grab a *BSD or tinyish Linux distribution, such as Slackware, Damn Small Linux, or possibly Debian.

i think that windows 2003 is nice... I used to use that OS and works good
what do you think?

lol

I think 2003 would be a little slow on a Pentium 133 with 32 MB of RAM.

it actually refuses to install on a 133mhz

one vote for slackware - its been built up from the days of floppy disk installs and 8.1 seemed to run fine on a 100mhz processor.

definately NOT gentoo - that took about 3 days of compiling on my 1.1ghz

I would advise against a source-based distro. It would take weeks to compile everything, for little gain ultimately.

According to Microsoft's site: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003...qs/default.mspx
it looks like Windows Server 2003 will just make the cut, as far as CPU speed is concerned. However that 32MB of RAM isn't even close to the 128MB minimum listed.

You might be able to just follow the HOWTO here that another Neowin member wrote up along the lines of setting up a Linux server quickly: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=258829

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yeah, I take back the gentoo vote after seeing it compile stuff on my old computer.