[conspire] Distro for Imac G3

[Rick Moen]

Quoting John Andrews (jla1200 at netzero.net):

> What would be a good distro to put in an Imac G3 400mhz 320 mb ram.
> Will a Kde desktop run alright? I tried Xfce once and didn't like it  
> that much. It didn't have  options like Kde. I read somewhere that  
> Kde runs too slow on 320mb ram I'm thinking of Ubuntu or Kubuntu or  
> Debian Etch.

All that flying-circus stuff that the "desktop" environments autostart
tend to chew up both RAM and CPU, though you can economise on both by 
dialing down the desktop-chrome effects.  You should also study the
installed OS configuration and find out what's autostarted that you have
no need for.

That applies regardless of distribution, and, also, regardless of window
manager or "desktop" environment.  David mentions Fluxbuntu, which
furnishes the minimalist Fluxbox window manager, which you might dislike
intensely if you declined Xfce on grounds of "not having options".  But 
compare:  http://xwinman.org/

David also mentions the important fact that *buntu's "desktop" disks
all fire up an entire live-CD graphical environment before offering you
the option to run a graphical installer.  That entails tremendous
amounts of overhead, RAM in particular.  So, if using *buntu, you should
favour one of the "altnerate" disks, which boot directly into a
traditional ncurses-based installer.

You could, anyway, come to CABAL and burn a selection of PPC distros to
take home and try.  But do bear in mind that your iMac is pretty
trailing edge hardware, and don't expect it to run kitchen-sink
graphical environments.

(We do, if nothing else, have the ability to burn reliable CDs.)