RedHat 9 - KDE or Gnome????
 

ok, i am a linux newbie. i have an old machine running RedHat 9 - K62 350 w/ 64m. also a small hdd, 3 gig, do i want to install KDE or Gnome. i have Gnome intstalled right now, and it running worse than windows did on the machine. i thought linux usually ran better than windows??

thanks in advance.

I'd go for www.gentoo.org

its a lot more efficient than most distros.. its what i'm running on my linux box (450MHz K6 II, 192mb RAM, 8 gb HD)

The basic Linux kernel will run better on almost any machine than will Windows, but all the newer versions of Linux, esp. those with the 2.6 kernel, and with the GUI's require much higher resources to run faster. You mentioned RH9 and that's a big resource hog.

RH is a good way to get started with linux, as is mandrake. However, the latter is not something that i particularly enjoyed using, though it did let me know that I could deal with linux. RH is convenient b/c it is well supported, gentoo is better now than it was a year ago b/c they do make binaries, but compiling is such a waste of time, given the marginal benefits. I am in much greater need of using my computer than spending time optimizing it. Having played with the above, I turned to Debian. I had a good bit of trouble getting it up and running (but b/c i was totally doing somethign stupid and have a fairly obscure hardware setup) but once it was up, it has been extremely easy to maintain and run whatever I want on it.

Given the machine described, compiling with gentoo will take FOREVER, don't do it. RH and Mandrake will consume some massive resources. Given that, I'd use debian (but then, when wouldn't I use debian?). <3 apt-get

thanks alot guys! i'll have a look at debian then.

Yes i just did my first debian install

The Netinstall discs are the way to go

100mb disc installs base system

then you customize what packages