Linux for a cab (133mhz)

[Crazy Cooter]

I've never used linux before so I'm hoping for a gentle shove in the the right direction...

Are there free builds/iso's you can download and install?  I just want the hardware to work and have the "windows explorer" equivilent.  It's going on a 133mhz machine with a dozen or so MAME games.

How well will it network with a pile of windows machines?  Will it see them/will they see it?

I'm just thinking it might be a better OS than a stripped down version on 98.  Plus it would be a new toy.  I pretty much just want the equivilent of DOS with a GUI for exploring files.

OK, I've found links for Red Hat 9, Debian, Mandrake 9.1 & Fedora.  Which would be better suited for this application?  What's the learning curve?  FWIW, I usually catch on to this kind of stuff quickly.

[dreamcastninja]

use slackware, i love it

[papaschtroumpf]

The learning curve can be quite steep at first but you can usually find help on linux forums, especially for networking with windows (accounts fopr maybe 30% of newbie help requests).

The problem is your machine, 133MHz  is really old and most of the distributions will run very poorly on it if you want a graphical inteface.

[Dave_K.]

Hey, why not try running knoppix mame!  Its a complete Linux LiveCD with mame.  You will have to edit the ISO file to insert your roms, and any configuration files you want.  What you are left with is a single bootable CD you can use on virtually any PC (even works without a harddrive!)  

http://sourceforge.net/projects/knoppixmame

[paigeoliver]

Do yourself a favor, spend the $30 for a faster computer. A friend recently brought me her "won't turn on" computer. It is the power supply, after looking inside and spying the Celeron 300 processor, we instead went on ebay and bought her a local used computer for a couple bucks more than a new power supply would have cost, and the new one is a P3 500 and has twice the RAM. It cost $34.

[Crazy Cooter]

I'm not really interested in buying anything else.  It just bugs me to have it sitting there doing nothing.  I figured it might be fun to torture myself with learning a thing or two about linux.  Besides, what's a better prize than playing a game of asteroids?  I'll get something going...

[maraxle]

I'm not really interested in buying anything else.  It just bugs me to have it sitting there doing nothing.  I figured it might be fun to torture myself with learning a thing or two about linux.  Besides, what's a better prize than playing a game of asteroids?  I'll get something going...

I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but if you go the Linux route and find that you don't like it or can't get the performance out of it that you want, check out FreeDOS (www.freedos.org).  I have setup a few sub-200mhz machines with FreeDOS and an old version of MAME, and had them classics without a hitch.

[screaming]

I'm not really interested in buying anything else.  It just bugs me to have it sitting there doing nothing.  I figured it might be fun to torture myself with learning a thing or two about linux.  Besides, what's a better prize than playing a game of asteroids?  I'll get something going...

  Fedora or Linspire are the two distros that are considered the most newb-friendly.  Start with either one of those and you have to jump through hoops to do anything powerful.

  If you're looking to jump neck-deep in linux, go for slackware or debian. Waste-deep, go for Gentoo. Knee-deep, go for a knoppix distro or SuSE.  Finally, if toe-deep is what you're after to test the waters go for Fedora or Linspire or maybe Mandrake.

  Generally speaking the easier the distro is to navigate and get used to, the more system resource it will gobble up.  The more gui-friendly are the ones that a lot of people find easy to use, but are also the resource hogs.  Once you learn linux and aren't afraid of compiling your own kernel and X.org distro, you'll be golden

  Head on over to DistroWatch, click the "Major Distributions" link on the top-right and read the descriptions of most of the major players.

Good Luck.  Welcome to Linux, and enjoy your stay!

-Steve

[rchadd]

for a 133Mhz machine maybe you sholud consider using vantage instead of mame

[DaemonCollector]

I just set up an old Pentium 133 with Vantage and the games work like a charm

[lucindrea]

Are there free builds/iso's you can download and install?  

all are free , well they all follow the open source lincence ... sometimes ( red hat is a good example ) you need to sift through 10 or more pages on their web site with advertisments for their commercial product ( it's basicly the same thing you can get for free , but your paying for service contract and a "pre built" collection of packages , not the software it'self ) , but they still must supply the software free else break the licence , just dont need to make it easy to get ahold of

[screaming]

Are there free builds/iso's you can download and install?  

all are free , well they all follow the open source lincence ... sometimes ( red hat is a good example ) you need to sift through 10 or more pages on their web site with advertisments for their commercial product ( it's basicly the same thing you can get for free , but your paying for service contract and a "pre built" collection of packages , not the software it'self ) , but they still must supply the software free else break the licence , just dont need to make it easy to get ahold of

   OR you could go to LinuxISO.

-Steve

[GadgetGeek]

if you want to keep the install to a minimum, Gentoo gives you quite a bit of control and they have a great user forum

[papaschtroumpf]

if you want to keep the install to a minimum, Gentoo gives you quite a bit of control and they have a great user forum

I wouldn't go for Gentoo on a Pentium 133 unless you're willing to spend days watching it build....

I would do this: download knoppix, it's a single CD and will boot off the CD-ROM without touching your hardrive or anythigng. This will let you try linux and see how well it runs on your machine just to see if it's the right way to go (I still think running the GUI from a modern distor on your machine is going to be dog slow).

There is a version of the knoppix CD with MAME on it, although you have to "rebuild" the CD image with your ROMs, so it's a little more work (I've never used it so I don't know how good/bad it is).

[Crazy Cooter]

I grabbed the Knoppix cd with MAME but haven't been able to get it rolling yet.  Does it have a GUI that should start with autorun enabled?  What I'm expecting (maybe it's not right) is to put the cd into any machine win98/xp etc. and some kind of gui or mame itself will pop onscreen.  So far I get nothing.  Maybe the iso didn't burn right.  Nero should handle this by burning as an image right?

[screaming]

I grabbed the Knoppix cd with MAME but haven't been able to get it rolling yet.  Does it have a GUI that should start with autorun enabled?  What I'm expecting (maybe it's not right) is to put the cd into any machine win98/xp etc. and some kind of gui or mame itself will pop onscreen.  So far I get nothing.  Maybe the iso didn't burn right.  Nero should handle this by burning as an image right?

   Did you read the docs?  Do yourself (and everyone else!) a favor by reading the documentation.  If you're going to go Linux, you better get used to reading documentation!

  No, there is no GUI that comes up.  with a BOOTABLE Linux CD, you need to BOOT off of it.  Which means putting it in your CDROM drive and reBOOTING.

  Make sure your computer is set to BOOT off your CDROM drive in your BIOS, too.

-Steve

[Crazy Cooter]

I haven't found much documentation for that project yet.  The website doesn't appear to display correctly & the forums are down.

Didn't I read somewhere about troubles with using linux & XP on the same system?  Or wouldn't it matter since it's all contained on the cd?  I'll probably move over to the 98 box anyways because that bios is more user friendly.

-edit
Here's the website for anyone else trying this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/knoppixmame

[screaming]

I haven't found much documentation for that project yet.  The website doesn't appear to display correctly & the forums are down.

Didn't I read somewhere about troubles with using linux & XP on the same system?  Or wouldn't it matter since it's all contained on the cd?  I'll probably move over to the 98 box anyways because that bios is more user friendly.

-edit
Here's the website for anyone else trying this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/knoppixmame

  Since the entire draw to Knoppix is that it's completely self contained on bootable medium, there's no "intrusion" of Knoppix to your system what-so-ever.  No need to worry about Windows/Linux compatibility.

  Generally speaking Koppix is Knoppix is Knoppix, whether it comes with MAME, PVR software or a naked woman.  For documentation or help with Knoppix check the user forums.

-Steve

[Crazy Cooter]

Cool.  Thank You.

[Howard_Casto]

my 2 cents.... silly user, linux is for servers!

no joke.... to put it mildly your machine sucks and won't run mame well, even classic games.  It'd make a much better server for something as that doesn't require a gui.

[paigeoliver]

my 2 cents.... silly user, linux is for servers!

no joke.... to put it mildly your machine sucks and won't run mame well, even classic games.  It'd make a much better server for something as that doesn't require a gui.

Wheee! Howard and I totally agree on something.

It would make a decent jukebox, Arcade Jukebox 8 runs fine on my 133 mhz laptop.

[GadgetGeek]

If Knoppix mame is giving you fits, check out AdvanceMame and AdvanceCD which creates a bootable mame as well.  probably run better on that old box than KnoppixMame would as well.
http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/cd-readme.html

[vputz]

I'd tend to agree.  I haven't used KnoppixMame myself, but I've used Knoppix and the Quantian derivative of it... both run KDE, which *may* be a bit hungry for a wee 133.  AdvanceMame may be a better choice since it will bypass most of that.

Now, having said that, learing about Linux is worthwhile for other reasons, and there are plenty of things you could still do with that box (mp3 jukebox maybe, fileserver, etc).  And AdvanceMame may do fine... but I'd worry a bit about all the background stuff with a standard Knoppix distro.  Depends on your memory, too.

-->VPutz