On Mon, 7 Feb 2022 08:50:36 -0700 William Lee Valentine <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am wondering whether a current Debian distribution can be installed > and run on an older Pentium III computer. (I have Debian 11.2 on a > DVD.) And have something usable? With the default GNOME desktop? Probably not. With a lightweight desktop like XFCE? Maybe. With a window manager only? Better chance, but still iffy. Main problem is lack of RAM and slow CPU. You'll need the 32-bit version of Debian. Here's a real example with equivalent hardware from around 2004 or 5: 1GHz Duron (PIII equivalent), 1 GB or so RAM, Fedora Core 6, GNOME desktop. My system at the time. After numerous upgrades from FC2, system had become sluggish, particularly with menus -- a second or so pause before appearing. I was able to get a usable system for another year or so by a very custom install of Debian Wheezy. Started with a terminal-only install, then added a minimal X with a window manager (Openbox), a few utilities and lastly apps. However, I doubt if Debian 11 would run well on it, even if you abandoned a desktop and went with a window manager. All you can do is try and see what happens. Good luck. > The computer is > > Dell Dimension XPS T500: Intel Pentium III processor (Katnai) > memory: 756 megabytes, running at 500 megahertz > IDE disc drive: 60 gigabytes > Debian partition: currently 42 gigabytes > Debian 6.0: Squeeze > > If I install Debian 11.2, will it run on this machine? Will it > preserve the files and directories that I have on Squeeze?
