im building a computer just using parts from a few older computers. I have a pretty good one (which im using now) but i want to make one to host a counter-strike server... its going to be a pretty shitty computer as i do not feel like spending any money.. what linux would give me maximum performance on avery old system (400mhz intel celeron processor, 64mb ram...thats basically everything important)

- i also want to be able to surf the web and have a decent word processor

so could somebody recommend me a distribution that would best suit my needs? thanks

Try gOS Linux, it should run even on a 386 comp.
h**p://thinkgos.com/downloads.php

Puppy Linux works on pretty well everything going right back to older hardware. Their pc-puppy-os project is getting close to a full release if you have at least 512Mb of RAM while being a bit more elegant.
PC-LinuxOS from Texstar and the Ripper Gang holds your hand a bit more and works well on everything from slightly out of date hardware up to the latest stuff.
For everything else try Ubuntu. You might have to be prepared to do a bit of delving for info on the net and to learn a different way of doing things but for most users Ubuntu is strong, developing fast and is going places. It would be a bit of a surprise if you couldn't find either Ubuntu or one of it's varieties Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc doing most of the things you might want to do with a computer.
Best of luck,
Bob

i would recommend ubuntu of if it is older hardware (like really old ) then xubuntu because it is lighter then ubuntu

well Ubuntu is the best if u r a newbie and dont wanna burn brain much..
but if u r a geek and who seek pleasure wen filtering things from muddy water, then u have opt fedora..as middle way u can try mandriva or gentoo. etc

yes try ubuntu 7.10

It just depends on what you wanna learn.

A full-blown Ubuntu won't be the best i think. Rather go for Xubuntu which is alot lighter. It's really easy and possibly one of the best bases to start with linux.

But if you wanna get performance from the box i would rather try and set up something else. And not everything is that hard. Here's a few examples of the famous ones:

Debian is what Ubuntu is based on. It's pretty nice and simple and it has APT (package manager) which is super-nice. Pretty easy and effective. You have more control of what's installed that with the Ubuntu distros, and combined with XFCE, then it's pretty nice. Debian also has nice and understandable documentation.

Slackware has a nice installer where you can just choose all the packages you want in the base system. But you might wanna have google open. And you'll learn what Linux is all about (it's the oldest surviving distro

You can go for a old-school gentoo install and build the whole damn thing from scratch, like bootstropping, chrooting and compiling kernels (and i promise you that you'll learn A LOT!). Gentoo is also really nice for setting up a custom distro. That does exactly what you want it to.

Old post, but whatever, i was a bit bored

try ubuntu!!!!



(or xubuntu (which is based on fluxbox) if you have an old pc)

While ubuntu seems to be the most popular distro, my preference is for the Puppy based NimbleX as it is a LiveCD. It run my adsl modem out of the box and has wine (windows emulator) built in.

IMHO . i would reco ubuntu or pclinux os - although ubuntu / kubuntu would be better