Many distros will work on a 386 w/4 megs ram, some will only do i586 or
newer, like mandrake... If you look at the RPM's they will say
blah-blah.i386.rpm, those are compiled for i386 or up, mandrakes rpms are
blah-blah.i586.mdk.rpm, which require pentium cpu. I think debian, slackware,
(most all distros over 2 years old), OpenBSD, ... should work.
The CPU isnt really the issue.... Compatable hardware, access to high speed
media (cdrom, net, ...) make a big difference on how easy/fast to install.
The RAM limits what you can do, (your not likely to run X, mysql, ...)
because they use a lot of memory (well.... a lot compared to 4 megs!).
If you just want a console box (no gui), do not want to run any services
(like www, dns, mail, ...), and you can boot to cd, or net (or can use floppy
and cd/net at the same time) then you should be able to setup linux on it. it
will take quite a while since its a 386 w/4 megs though!
It sounds to me that that laptop would be more useful as a windows3.1 client
(since windows 3.1 will give you a gui, ....) It wont be much of a server,
wont have a gui, ...)
Jamie
Sometime just before Friday 03 May 2002 05:32 pm Dexter Graphic Wrote
about:[EUG-LUG:2534] Linux micro-distributions
: Dan, this might solve your laptop problems. Take a look at Wolf
: below, also tiny Linux: http://tiny.seul.org/en/ -Dexter
:
:
: From http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=2102&lang=en
:
: Question:
:
: I have a problem, and I've been asking for help for a while and
: nobody could come up with a solution. I have a very old
: notebook, 386 processor with 4 MB RAM and floppy is the only
: input, which linux would run with this limited hardware, and
: where to find it?
:
: Answer:
:
: A handful of linux micro-distributions exist which run from a
: single floppy. Some are meant to be used as a rescue tool,
: others as firewalls, third as... Here is a short list, just for
: illustration:
:
: Pocket Linux: simple workstation with ssh client.
: http://www.pocket-lnx.org/about.html
:
: WOLF (Web On a Linux Floppy): Several simple client
: distributions; webbrowsing with lynx, email, ftp.
: http://www.woalf.uklinux.net/
:
: LRP rooter...
: http://master-www.linuxrouter.org:8080/
:
: Giotto. Modular mini distro. Various stuff...
: http://www.quietsche-entchen.de/giotto/
:
: floppyfw. Firewall...
: http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/
:
: There is more, but this is enough for the illustration, I
: suppose... The problem is: Most (all?) of these
: mini-distributions require 8Mb RAM. Many require i486 too.
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