Light Linux distro for Video on Obsolete Hardware?

[KarTajan]

need to bring up an obsolete box. It was running XP, and all it needs to do is run a .WMV video automatically on startup (looping/ full screen)

It is an old decrepit P3, with 256MB RAM. The original XP install died with the old HDD. I have a replacement HDD, and the WMV file. <Note the system will only boot to CD or HDD (and probably FDD, but I swore off those years ago). Refuses to boot to USB or DVD>

I do not want to do a new XP install, just because it took way to long to start up. I DL'd an iso for mythbuntu and puppy, but I can't seem to get the autostart of the video loop on power on. (the things I found in the googleverse have not helped)

In "Magic Perfect Happy Land", I could download an iso with a small footprint OS, that was just enough to run this video loop. Note that I am not normally a Linux user- I am primarily a Windows kind of guy.

 

[Ion Silverbolt]

Look into an openbox based distro. Crunchbang is a popular choice in that respect. Manjaro openbox also looks pretty good. Get a 32-bit version regardless of the distro you choose. 32-bit distros use less memory.

After that, all you have to do is add a command to the openbox autorun.sh file to run whatever movie player that is available. This is easier than it sounds. The following line would launch a video full-screen in mplayer in repeat mode for example:

mplayer -fs -loop 0 /home/username/video/videofilehere.mp4

The file you need to edit is located in your home directory after you install, which you can open with any text editor. The file may also be available from the start menu as well, but that depends on the distro. Regardless, the autorun.sh file is located here:

/home/user/.config/openbox/autostart.sh