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Linux distro for older hardware

by Joel Desrochers

I second the vote for Slackware. Text based install and overall performance make it my favorite for older hardware. Unfortunately I prefer 128 MB RAM minimum for console only and around 256MB for X. Memory is cheap though. I am still quite happy with my P300/384MB RAM with Slack. Before Slackware, I toyed with a few minimalist distros (Peanut and Grey Cat Linux but found most of them lacking in either reliability or application packages/support). Two other tips on trying Linux and picking a distributionto try: 1) Don't rule out Knoppix, the popular CD-ROM bootable distro. You can use it on another box (possibly your current Windows 9X or XP) without modifying anything on the hard disk. Also makes a great PC diagnostic tool. http://www.knoppix.com/ 2) Consider reading up on the many distros on one of the many websites that list information. These are my two favorites and I am sure there are many more. http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html http://www.distrowatch.com Joel _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

Aug. 17, 2004

Re: [Wlug] linux for older computers

by Mike Leo

well, if you want to go crazy sure...or try http://lfs-mirror.tpegg.org/lfs/news.html if you REALLY want to learn linux, and not just use linux! I am in the begining stages of lfs myself...plan on learning more than I thought possible --- Adam Keck <ghostis(a)mac.com> wrote: > Or you could roll your own distro: > > http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lwl1/ > > I did this with moderate success last Memorial Day > break for a 486 > laptop with 16mb of RAM and a 540 MB hard-drive. > Very fun. Requires a > second Linux machine of acceptable speed to compile > on and some sort of > working bootable removable media on the target > machine. In my case I > used the 1.44mb floppy. For easy of compiling, if > you are not > comfortable with building your own tool chain, I > recommend using an > older version of uclibc which builds gcc wrappers > for you. > > > -Adam > > On Aug 15, 2004, at 8:31 AM, Andrew Perry wrote: > > > > > Hi everyone. I have some older computers, > > the newest of the bunch being Celeron-566 MHz-64 > MB > > RAM, the oldest a 486-25 MHz- maybe 16 MB RAM > > and wonder if anyone could either > > > > a) recommend linux distributions for them > > or > > b) point me to a site with minimum hardware > > requirements for linux distributions > > > > Primarily my goal is to learn more about linux. > > I would prefer something sold for a nominal cost > on > > CD's. > > > > Cheapbytes.com sells Pink Tie 7.3,Mandrake 8.2, > > Debian 2.2 and some others for around $1 only, > > but offer no guidance as to the hardware > requirements. > > > > Thanks, > > Andrew > > > > ===== > > -Dr. Andrew B. Perry > > Assistant Prof. of Mathematics, Springfield > College > > 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109 > > _______________________________________________ > > Wlug mailing list > > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

Aug. 16, 2004

Re: [Wlug] linux for older computers

by Adam Keck

Or you could roll your own distro: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lwl1/ I did this with moderate success last Memorial Day break for a 486 laptop with 16mb of RAM and a 540 MB hard-drive. Very fun. Requires a second Linux machine of acceptable speed to compile on and some sort of working bootable removable media on the target machine. In my case I used the 1.44mb floppy. For easy of compiling, if you are not comfortable with building your own tool chain, I recommend using an older version of uclibc which builds gcc wrappers for you. -Adam On Aug 15, 2004, at 8:31 AM, Andrew Perry wrote: > > Hi everyone. I have some older computers, > the newest of the bunch being Celeron-566 MHz-64 MB > RAM, the oldest a 486-25 MHz- maybe 16 MB RAM > and wonder if anyone could either > > a) recommend linux distributions for them > or > b) point me to a site with minimum hardware > requirements for linux distributions > > Primarily my goal is to learn more about linux. > I would prefer something sold for a nominal cost on > CD's. > > Cheapbytes.com sells Pink Tie 7.3,Mandrake 8.2, > Debian 2.2 and some others for around $1 only, > but offer no guidance as to the hardware requirements. > > Thanks, > Andrew > > ===== > -Dr. Andrew B. Perry > Assistant Prof. of Mathematics, Springfield College > 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109 > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

Aug. 15, 2004

Re: [Wlug] linux for older computers

by Andrew Robert

I was wondering if you had considered Knoppix? It can be run from the CD or be installed on the hard drive. Requirements for this are pretty small. i486+ processor 16MB RAM (text mode) 96MB RAM (graphics mode) Bootable CD-ROM Standard SVGA graphics card PS2 or USB mouse You can read up more on Knoppix at http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html . Thank you, Andrew Robert Systems Architect TS&S Infrastructure Support - OpenVMS Massachusetts Financial Services Phone: (617) 954-5882 Pager: (781) 764-7321

Aug. 15, 2004

Re: [Wlug] linux for older computers

by Jeff Kinz

On Sun, Aug 15, 2004 at 05:31:28AM -0700, Andrew Perry wrote: > > Hi everyone. I have some older computers, > the newest of the bunch being Celeron-566 MHz-64 MB > RAM, the oldest a 486-25 MHz- maybe 16 MB RAM > and wonder if anyone could either > > a) recommend linux distributions for them > or > b) point me to a site with minimum hardware > requirements for linux distributions > > Primarily my goal is to learn more about linux. > I would prefer something sold for a nominal cost on > CD's. The RULE project produces a redhat based distro re-configured for use with "smaller hardware" configurations. Its here: http://www.rule-project.org/ -- Linux/Open Source. Now all your base belongs to you, for free. ============================================================ Idealism: "Realism applied over a longer time period" Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.

Aug. 15, 2004

Re: [Wlug] linux for older computers

by Charles R. Anderson

On Sun, Aug 15, 2004 at 12:47:30PM -0400, Andy Stewart wrote: > One problem which I have discovered is that modern distributions have large > memory requirements just for the darn graphical installer(!). You might need > to find a distribution that still has either a graphically light installer or > perhaps a text based installer. I believe SuSE still has a text based > installer, and I think Slakware's installer is "graphically light" (its > ncurses, isn't it?). Actually, for RPM-based distros, or at least Anaconda-installer-based ones (Red Hat, Fedora Core) a large part of the memory requirement isn't the graphical installer, but the RPM transaction set size. Even text-based installs of these distros can use 64MB or more just for the installer.

Aug. 15, 2004

Re: [Wlug] linux for older computers

by Andy Stewart

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 15 August 2004 8:31 am, Andrew Perry wrote: > Hi everyone. I have some older computers, > the newest of the bunch being Celeron-566 MHz-64 MB > RAM, the oldest a 486-25 MHz- maybe 16 MB RAM > and wonder if anyone could either > > a) recommend linux distributions for them > or > b) point me to a site with minimum hardware > requirements for linux distributions Hi Andrew, One problem which I have discovered is that modern distributions have large memory requirements just for the darn graphical installer(!). You might need to find a distribution that still has either a graphically light installer or perhaps a text based installer. I believe SuSE still has a text based installer, and I think Slakware's installer is "graphically light" (its ncurses, isn't it?). In addition, if you want a graphical environment, you would want to consider using window managers such as FVWM(2), blackbox, icewm, etc. (or anything that requires a small amount of memory). 64 MB isn't so bad as long as you have a fair amount of swap space and don't run applications which are memory hogs. I suspect that KDE or GNOME would run unacceptably slowly in 64 MB. Later, Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBH5OjHl0iXDssISsRAjaRAJ9i7Wz3mpYb8LPDiWFeX0E6wxf/aACfUiNF R/omYcXy6Wglxr2DEnqB0dI= =vmqG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Aug. 15, 2004

Re: [Wlug] linux for older computers

by frank p

The usual response: it depends. Do you want to have a nice graphical interface to a bunch of system utilities? Do you need just a command line interface to get a feel for linux command-line? When you say that you are looking to "learn more about linux", do you mean from an administrative perspective or a developer perspective or an applications perspective...? IMHO, in general... On the really old machines, you could probably put a minimalistic install of any number of distributions. I tend to favor Debian there, especially since it installs nicely (if you know what you're doing) into 300MB of space. I'd say anything 300Mhz and above should be able to run any of the really graphical-based distros (redhat, fedora, mandrake, suse)... though disk space will be a large factore, I'm sure. hope that helps, somewhat -frank p On Sun, 15 Aug 2004, Andrew Perry wrote: > > Hi everyone. I have some older computers, > the newest of the bunch being Celeron-566 MHz-64 MB > RAM, the oldest a 486-25 MHz- maybe 16 MB RAM > and wonder if anyone could either > > a) recommend linux distributions for them > or > b) point me to a site with minimum hardware > requirements for linux distributions > > Primarily my goal is to learn more about linux. > I would prefer something sold for a nominal cost on > CD's. > > Cheapbytes.com sells Pink Tie 7.3,Mandrake 8.2, > Debian 2.2 and some others for around $1 only, > but offer no guidance as to the hardware requirements. > > Thanks, > Andrew

Aug. 15, 2004

Re: [Wlug] linux for older computers

by Mike Leo

i recommend slackware, but don't know the hardware requirements, but this is the minimum hardware per the site: 386 processor 16MB RAM 50 megabytes of hard disk space 3.5" floppy drive You can obtain it here: http://www.slackware.org/getslack/ I recommend it since I was using Redhat for a long time and tried slack just about a month ago. Slackware is incredibly much faster (is that a sentence?). I was ammazed at its speed and quickness. It is small and streamlined and more generic to linux. I know redhat, but it is hard to get around in other distro's since Redhat does things so differently. --- Andrew Perry <perryand(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > Hi everyone. I have some older computers, > the newest of the bunch being Celeron-566 MHz-64 MB > RAM, the oldest a 486-25 MHz- maybe 16 MB RAM > and wonder if anyone could either > > a) recommend linux distributions for them > or > b) point me to a site with minimum hardware > requirements for linux distributions > > Primarily my goal is to learn more about linux. > I would prefer something sold for a nominal cost on > CD's. > > Cheapbytes.com sells Pink Tie 7.3,Mandrake 8.2, > Debian 2.2 and some others for around $1 only, > but offer no guidance as to the hardware > requirements. > > Thanks, > Andrew > > ===== > -Dr. Andrew B. Perry > Assistant Prof. of Mathematics, Springfield College > 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109 > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

Aug. 15, 2004

linux for older computers

by Andrew Perry

Hi everyone. I have some older computers, the newest of the bunch being Celeron-566 MHz-64 MB RAM, the oldest a 486-25 MHz- maybe 16 MB RAM and wonder if anyone could either a) recommend linux distributions for them or b) point me to a site with minimum hardware requirements for linux distributions Primarily my goal is to learn more about linux. I would prefer something sold for a nominal cost on CD's. Cheapbytes.com sells Pink Tie 7.3,Mandrake 8.2, Debian 2.2 and some others for around $1 only, but offer no guidance as to the hardware requirements. Thanks, Andrew ===== -Dr. Andrew B. Perry Assistant Prof. of Mathematics, Springfield College 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109

Aug. 15, 2004