Debian, 386 release, using icewm as the desktop interface. You do not want KDE, Gnome or anything similar.

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-02-02, 10:08:

Debian, 386 release, using icewm as the desktop interface. You do not want KDE, Gnome or anything similar.

is it a up to date release or is all the software like 5-20 years old?

Debian updates all of their packages for their (supported) platforms evenly - so it will have whatever the current kernel is, current version of ssh, nfs, samba etc.

Status on which platforms are considered stable and supported is here: https://www.debian.org/ports/

i386 (which is really 386 through to the very latest non-64bit x86 Intel processors) is an equal-importance platform on Debian as 64bit amd64/x86_64.

Here's an announcement on the debian mailing list regarding CPU support...
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announc … 5/msg00001.html

Looks like with your K6-3+ you are stuck with Debian Jessie, which is EOL even for its LTS variant since June 2020: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases

Still it might very well be sufficient for your use case.
But I wouldn't expect any version of Firefox that was released in the past 10-15 years to run sufficiently fast (if at all) on your hardware.

gex85 wrote on 2021-02-02, 10:38:

Here's an announcement on the debian mailing list regarding CPU support... https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announc … 5/msg […]
Show full quote

Here's an announcement on the debian mailing list regarding CPU support...
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announc … 5/msg00001.html

Looks like with your K6-3+ you are stuck with Debian Jessie, which is EOL even for its LTS variant since June 2020: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases

Still it might very well be sufficient for your use case.
But I wouldn't expect any version of Firefox that was released in the past 10-15 years to run sufficiently fast (if at all) on your hardware.

Never realised that the K6-2/3 wasn't equivalent to 686 class. Learn something new every day! Something like NetBSD might be worth considering if you want to keep current and still run a unix variant on old kit.

Firefox isn't especially speedy on a modern device like a Pi3, either - and that will run rings around a K6-3.
Modern browsing on old kit is not a pleasant experience, whatever the platform or OS.

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-02-02, 10:08:

Debian, 386 release, using icewm as the desktop interface. You do not want KDE, Gnome or anything similar.

Back in the early 2000's I used qvwm as a window manager, but that hasn't been updated for a long time.
I don't know if there are more modern alternatives for that Win2k look...

Many distros have dropped the support for 32-bit, but Debian (and some derivatives like Sparky) should be ok.
EDIT: Yeah, I see there are some CPU feature requirements that limit the options on Debian as well...
Older Ubuntu versions like Xubuntu 18.04 i386 version might also work (requires pae), but it isn't a very good option if there are no updates coming any longer.

For absolute speed on older machines, there are more customized options like slitaz.

mr.cat wrote on 2021-02-02, 10:52:

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-02-02, 10:08:

Debian, 386 release, using icewm as the desktop interface. You do not want KDE, Gnome or anything similar.

Back in the early 2000's I used qvwm as a window manager, but that hasn't been updated for a long time.
I don't know if there are more modern alternatives for that Win2k look...

I remember that, as well as Afterstep.

For a long time in the mid 90's the best choice (if you weren't a masochist and preferred twm) was fvwm or fvwm2. You could get a X widget replacement set for fvwm95 which coloured and shaded all the normal widgets provided by libxaw. Guess which OS sparked that look-and-feel styling change...

My first introduction to the X interface was Openlook/olwm on Sun OS. That was insanely crude by comparison to anything modern.

Puppy Linux 4.1.2 Retro

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-02-02, 10:43:

Something like NetBSD might be worth considering if you want to keep current and still run a unix variant on old kit.

NetBSD is cool, but it needs some work to be usable. New software these days often has some Linuxisms, so there might be some complications for porting stuff to BSDs.
They will probably always have support for i386, so that's a plus.

If you want a unix on your obscure hardware, NetBSD is the way to go. I think I might be the only person in the world who has tried to run the latest NetBSD on a Motorola MVME board - when I got in touch the maintainers of the MVME porting team at NetBSD last year they hadn't had anyone test it - but, it still gets built 😀

Yeah, BSD-like systems are cool. I like the idea also, most probably you will get a nice OS, but some technical knowledge is required if you want to go this path.