I have a friend who wants to learn unix-like CLI (linux or anything, doesn't care) for some web admin tasks (installing apache and so on)
He only has very old hardware to spare:
- AMD P6 II 300MHz
- 64MB RAM
- HD is more recent: 60GB
I tried the latest Debian & Ubuntu server- to no avail, or I would not have slept all night because of the sheer noise of the computer fan- but I digress…
Do you know any modern linux distrib that supports such an old hardware? Or should I use a very old distrib? (Debian Potato comes to mind)
Or is the hardware definitely too old?
UPDATE:
The problem I have with both Ubuntu and Debian is that the installer stalls at 74% (languages, locales). The requested language is Swiss French with a Swiss keyboard (QWERTZ). I don't know if it is relevant…
Also note that (although it will change later, of course) the box did not have any network connection. It may look strange for a would-be server, but it's only for learning at home.
Best Answer
OpenBSD will run fine on that spec.
It was the first sans-GUI operating system that I sank my teeth into many years ago.
Indeed I still ran some of those same machines, at much lower specs than you give, until recently. When I got tired of the clutter, noise and power consumption.