Ugh, distro horror.

On the family eMachine: (400Mhz processor, 192MB RAM, 4.3GB Hard drive)

Xubuntu was somewhere between horribly slow and annoyingly slow. Even Opera took a while to load, and it took forever to startup. I went and installed Fluxbuntu, but have met some annoyances. In addition to Fluxbox not being user friendly,
Fluxbuntu having some pretty annoying pre-installed applications, and worst of all, the screen resolution being funktastic, I've decided I needed to replace it.
And so I go to Distrowatch
First try. KateOS. After quite a few errors, it doesn't even boot from the LiveCD. Working with the nice folks at the forum on that one.
Second try. BeaFanatIX. Same error as Dreamlinux and Knoppix.
(It fails to find the CD holding the OS, and drops me to a rather limited shell)
It's actually rather unfortunate that BeaFanatIX had those same issues (not sure if they're resolvable) because it looked like a great distribution for these computers.

More eMachines!?

Yes.
Three more.
same specs, except different RAM amounts. One has 32MB, the other two have 160MB.
The two w/160 are running AntiX, and the other, DSL.
In addition, the eMachine with 192MB RAM is now running Xubuntu (I had a corrupt disk prior) and is the family computer. It connects to the internet fine, although Firefox was too heavy for it, so I installed Opera. Shoot me.
But...
I made an interesting find! Windows 3.1!
What to do with that...
And, I got my Dad to order me an external CD drive, and a wireless PC Card, that supposedly works with Linux.

Two old computers, and pics.

So, today I brought home the Presario.




But, I also got an eMachine (read: piece of crap) with 192 MB RAM 400MHz Celeron, and a 4GB Hard drive.
While it should load Xubuntu, I got some very strange errors trying to load the LiveCD.
Same with all the other Debian based distros (I tried Knoppix, Dreamlinux, and Xubuntu)
I had to install MEPIS (only thing I had at the time), but it's a bit too heavy. I can't figure out how to decrease the KDE effects either.


Although I don;t have it here at home, I did have an old Pro-Tech with these specs.
132MHz Processor, 16MB RAM, and a 1 GB Hard drive. After failing miserably to install DSL via Poorman's (it wouldn't boot from CD)
Also, it had a rather weird screen color. I totally destroyed it anyways, so I'm gonna have to try getting an OS that fits on a floppy.




On a lighter note, just before I left, I managed to install DSL on another Pro-Tech Machine, which seemed slightly newer (or just had better specs).
132MHz Processor
32MB RAM
1.5GB Hard drive

I was succesfully able to install DSL on this one, however, it took me three tries (GRUB wasn't working, so I had to use LILO)


Well, that makes, uhm...
5/7 of my Computers now have Linux.
And I'm getting two more (maybe three, but don't count on it) tomorrow.