64 Studio

64 Studio Ltd. produces bespoke GNU/Linux distributions which are compatible with official Debian and Ubuntu releases. Specialising in multimedia and digital content creation platforms which we develop for our OEM partners, they also offer support, documentation services and consultancy. Their software is already included in several shipping products in the professional audio market, with more to follow. In addition, they offer a free download product which has won critical acclaim for its stability and high performance.

Thinking of giving our free distro a try? You can download an installer for version 2.1 (both 64-bit and 32-bit versions). This will install Debian with X.org, the Gnome desktop, Linux kernel 2.6.21 with realtime preemption patches (including a realtime SMP kernel for AMD64 and Intel 64 dual core and multi-processor machines) and a selection of creative applications. These applications cover audio and music, video, 2D and 3D graphics, publishing for the web or print, and the internet and office tools a creative user is likely to need for their daily work. Adding your favourite packages from Debian Etch is as easy as apt-get, or a few clicks in Synaptic.

Please note that these releases are free software, and come with no warranty. However, the software is stable and is in daily use by thousands of creative people around the world. If you would like to send feedback or make a suggestion for improvement, please subscribe to one of their mailing lists or try the forums on this site. For other communication, please have a look at the contacts page. Developers and users who are interested in getting involved with the 64 Studio project are most welcome. Come and get it

Click here to go to their official website

PC-BSD

Summary

PC-BSD, or PCBSD, is a Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system built upon the most recent releases of FreeBSD. It aims to be easy to install by using a graphical installation program, and easy and ready-to-use immediately by providing KDE SC as the pre-installed graphical user interface. It provides official binary nVidia and Intel drivers for hardware acceleration and an optional 3D desktop interface through Kwin, and Wine is ready-to-use in running Microsoft Windows software. PC-BSD is able to run Linux software, in addition to FreeBSD ports, and it has its own PBI package management system that allows users to graphically install pre-built software packages from a single downloaded executable file, which is unique for BSD operating systems.

Requirements

Minimum system requirements:

• Intel Pentium II or higher
• 512 MB RAM
• 12 GB of free Hard Drive space (Primary partition or entire disk)
• Network card
• Sound card

Recommended system requirements:

• Intel Pentium 4 or higher
• 1 GB of RAM
• 20 GB of free Hard Drive space (Primary partition or entire disk)
• Network card
• Sound card
• 3D accelerated video card (NVIDIA, ATI)

Ubuntu Studio

Summary

Ubuntu Studio is an officially recognized derivative of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, which is explicitly geared to general multimediaproduction. The original version, based on Ubuntu 7.04, was released on May 10, 2007.

Requirements

• 1 GHz CPU (x86 processor (Pentium 4 or better))
• 1 GiB RAM (system memory)
• 15 GB of hard-drive space (or USB stick, memory card or external drive but see LiveCD for an alternative approach)
• 800 by 600 screen resolution
• Either a CD/DVD drive or a USB port for the installer media

Sidux linux

Summary

aptosid and sidux are based on Debian's most modern branch, sid. They include a manual^[4] and a collection of tools and scripts to make desktop administration easier.

One of aptosid's and sidux's more notable features, unlike most other Linux distributions, they utilize a true 'rolling-release-cycle', and thus continue to remain current. Users can update all of the system's packages via the command 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. Through this model, there should not, in theory, ever be a need to overwrite a aptosid or sidux system by installing an entirely new version. Other Linux distributions that use the rolling release model include Arch Linux, Gentoo and Linux Mint Debian Edition.

System recommendations

aptosid is officially supported for the i686 computer architecture and the amd64 computer architecture

Slax Linux

Summary

     Slax is a modern, portable, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design. Despite its small size, Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use, including a well organized graphical user interface and useful recovery tools for system administrators.

     The modular approach gives you the ability to include any other software in Slax easily. If you're missing your favourite text editor, networking tool or game, simply download a module with the software and copy it to Slax, no need to install, no need to configure.

If you are a beginner or you're just too busy to make it yourself, follow a few steps to build your own customized operating system by using web-based interface here.

Requirements

Memory
------
36 MB to boot slax.
96 MB to run Xwindow with fluxbox
144 MB to run Xwindow with KDE
328 MB to be able to use copy2ram cheatcode

Processor
---------
i486 or better, Pentium or AMD are both OK.

Gentoo

Summary

Gentoo Linux (/ˈdʒɛntuː/ jen-too) is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen configuration. Where source-code is available, Portage normally supplies no precompiled binaries, continuing in the tradition of the ports collection, although for convenience, some software packages (such as Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice) are also available as precompiled binaries for various architectures where compiling would otherwise be very time consuming. The development project and its products are named after the fastest-swimming penguin, the Gentoo, to reflect the potential speed improvements of machine-specific optimization. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized for the user's machine. Gentoo describes itself as a meta-distribution, "because of its near-unlimited adaptability", in that the majority of users have configurations and sets of installed programs which are unique to themselves

Requirements

Gentoo Linux can be as heavy as you want, or as small as you want. Yet unless you deviate from the documented approach, Gentoo Linux remains a source-based distribution. Because of that, it has a slightly higher disk space requirement than other distributions. A minimal (base) Gentoo Linux installation takes a little less than 2Gbyte of diskspace (including Linux kernel source code and the Gentoo Portage tree, which take about 640 Mbyte in total). But with 2Gbyte, you don't have room for much more than a base installation.

To have a comfortable installation, yet with room to spare for additional installations, you should consider a total diskspace of at least 20 Gbyte for the applications alone. With current disk sizes, this should not be a problem. If you don't install a full-blown KDE or GNOME, you should have enough with 10Gbyte or less.

Disk space aside, Gentoo Linux can run and install with almost any system specification. Of course, the lower the specs, the higher the duration of an installation. Installing Gentoo Linux on a i486 with 32 Mbyte of memory is doable (but not recommended).

Knoppix

Summary

KNOPPIX is a bootable Live system on CD or DVD, consisting of a representative collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it (over 8GB on the DVD "Maxi" edition).

Hardware requirements

• Intel-compatible processor (i486 or later)
• 32 MB of RAM for text mode, at least 64 MB for graphics mode with LXDE (at least 128 MB of RAM is recommended to use the various office products)
• Bootable CD-ROM drive, or a boot floppy and standard CD-ROM (IDE/ATAPI or SCSI)
• Standard SVGA-compatible graphics card
• Serial or PS/2 standard mouse or IMPS/2-compatible USB-mouse

Slackware

Summary

Slackware is a free and open source Linux-based operating system. It was one of the earliest operating systems to be built on top of the Linux kernel and is the oldest currently being maintained.^[1] Slackware was created by Patrick Volkerding of Slackware Linux, Inc. in 1993. The current stable version is 13.37, released on April 27, 2011.

Slackware aims for design stability and simplicity, and to be the most "Unix-like" Linux distribution, making as few modifications as possible to software packages from upstream and using plain text files and a small set of shell scripts for configuration and administration

Requirements

Product		Slackware 13 - Check requirements at the slackware site for updates.
Processor		Any 486 CPU or better
RAM		128 MB (1 GB+ recommended)
Drive space		5 GB+ for full install
Drives		Runs from hard disk, USB flash drive
Video		VGA or better
File systems		Ext2, read/write access to FAT

Zenwalk

Summary

Zenwalk is a Linux distribution founded by Jean-Philippe Guillemin. It was originally based on Slackware. Since its creation, the distribution has become very different from Slackware in most regards while still maintaining compatibility with its binary packages. Zenwalk aims to be a modern and multi-purpose Linux distribution by focusing on Internet applications, multimedia and programming tools.^[2] Additionally, Zenwalk comes with many specialized tools, designed for beginner through advanced users as it offers system configuration via both graphical and command-line operations

Requirements

Pentium III class processor
128 Mb RAM
2Gb HDD

Puppy Linux

Summary

Puppy Linux is a full-fledged operating system, bundled with a collection of application suites for a wide variety of tasks suitable for general use. Puppy is small-sized, so it can boot from many media. It is also useful as a rescue disk, a demonstration system, leaving the original/existing operating system unaltered, or as an OS to a system with a blank or missing hard drive, or for keeping old computers useful

Requirements

Minimum Hardware Requirements for Puppy Linux 4.2.1

• 500MHZ processor
• 128MB RAM
• 512MB free hard drive space to create an optional save file
• No hard drive required to boot a Live Disc.
• CD-ROM any speed

Minimum Hardware Requirements for Puppy Linux 4.1.2

• 233MHZ processor
• 128MB RAM
• 512MB free hard drive space to create an optional save file.
• No hard drive required to boot a Live Disc.
• CD-ROM any speed

Dreamlinux

Summary

     The distro promises a lot. First, Dreamlinux 3.5 claims 100% multimedia support out of the box, something that any living being using computers will appreciate. One of the major perceived advantages of Windows over Linux distros is the support for proprietary audio and video formats, DVD playback and such.

     Although I have already shown on several occasions how extremely easy it is to obtain these gadgets on a variety of distros (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Sabayon etc), Dreamlinux should be the next step in having it all ready and dandy.

     Then, there's the issue of beauty. Dreamlinux comes with a very sexy Xfce desktop, adorned with the Avant desktop manager, offering OSX-like looks with minimal hardware requirements. We have already seen OSX-like dock and style on gOS Linux, an Ubuntu-based distro. Again, Dreamlinux aims to take the bar one notch higher.

Requirement

you can safely run it on a machine with as little as 128MB RAM, which is definitely appealing for people with old, low-end machines, which can be brought back to beautiful life by running Dreamlinux.

Centos

Summary

CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.  CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)  CentOS is free.

CentOS is developed by a small but growing team of core developers.  In turn the core developers are supported by an active user community including system administrators, network administrators, enterprise users, managers, core Linux contributors and Linux enthusiasts from around the world.

CentOS has numerous advantages over some of the other clone projects including:  an active and growing user community, quickly rebuilt, tested, and QA'ed errata packages, an extensive mirror network, developers who are contactable and responsive, multiple free support avenues including IRC Chat, Mailing Lists, Forums, a dynamic FAQ.

This site makes use of Javascript.  If your browser doesn't work with Javascript we recommend you use FireFox.

Requirement

4MB, 8MB: Dies at bootstrap loader.
12MB, 16MB: Dies while loading acpi.ko.
20MB: Boots / Successfully installed the default minimal distribution set.
Mem: 2484K Active, 1396K Iact, 6004K Wired, 680K Cache, 1984K Buf, 348K Free
Swap: 7184K Total, 2732K Used, 4452K Free, 38% Inuse

MEPIS

Summary

     MEPIS is a set of Linux distributions, distributed as Live CDs that can be installed onto a hard disk drive. MEPIS is developed and maintained by an active community begun by Warren Woodford and the eponymous company MEPIS LLC.

     The most popular MEPIS distribution is SimplyMEPIS, which is based primarily on Debian stable. It can either be installed onto a hard drive or used as a Live CD, which makes it externally bootable for troubleshooting and repairing many operating systems. It includes the KDE desktop environment.

     MEPIS LLC offers senior consulting services for product strategy, architecture design, business and systems analysis, and cross-platform software development.

Requirement

• Intel Pentium or equivalent including newer Celeron, Xeon, AMD or AMD64 processor • A bootable CDROM drive • 3GB available hard drive space • 256 MB RAM The 64 bit versions of MEPIS will only work with a 64 bit processor. If your system was made before 2006, it almost certainly has a 32 bit processor. If your system only meets the minimum requirements, performance may be poor and it may be necessary to manually adjust the installation configuration