linux for school

[Keymaster16]

i need a distro of linux for a school computer coruse, can anyone recomend me a distro that is

-easy to install and use

-can run on 8-10 year old Dells and IBMs

-something i can learn from.

note i don't need to use high-end apps.

so any suggestions?

thanks in advance!

 

[simple]

my suggestions:
ubuntu
mandriva
knoppix (live cd)
hope this helps! c ya!!

 

[The General]

Stay away from Mandriva, Suse and Fedora.

Stick to Debian or Debian-based distros and Slackware.

 

[Nikkon]

I love Fedora for programming, but that it is a little graphic intensive.

I would also suggest Debian, its a good solid linux distro that is highly customizable and not very resource intensive.

Other than than you could also go old school with a simply 2.6.x text based kernel.

 

[jakec]

what are the specs of these Machines?

There is nothing wrong with Mandriva, but for 8 to 10 year old machines I wouldn't reccomend it, try these:

Vector Linux 4.3
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

BeaFanatIX
http://bea.cabarel.com/

Elive:
http://www.elivecd.org/

Deli
http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/

Luit Linux
http://luitlinux.sarovar.org/

 

[Keymaster16]

the distro is due Friday, right now i looks like i'll take ubuntu and Debian on friday, i'll install Debian first and if that doesn't work then ubuntu, thank you all for the help so far.

@jakec: 256MB RAM, i'm gona say SDDR, and about 3GBs max HD from what my teacher said. most likly the CPUs are intel, im not too sure about video but they probably have cards on them, as integrated graphics where introduce about 5-6 years ago right?



so which one of the ones posts above can install in an hour and a half or less? (this isnÂ’t mandatory since my teacher will leave it on till its done, still itÂ’d be good to know)

also if any of the distros that matches the specs i said earlier can also recognize and use USB keys for storage, that'll solve the HD space problem.

again thank you all simple, The General, Nikkon and jakec. you've helped m out a lot

 

[jakec]

Keymaster,

pretty much any of the above Distros I posted can be installed relatively quickly, don't worry too much about the Video card. it doesn't matter.

Any of the above distros (DSL & puppy in particular) work very well with USB keys. However most ofthe above distros come as a CD so you can check em' out first before you install them

Jake

 

[ainstushar]

If you don't want gui and if the computers are really really old, then i would suggest arch. It is very compact and efficient. Best of all, it has pacman (package manager, not the game) so you can customize it.