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*NIX for old laptop?

T

TandyMan100

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I'm looking for a Unix/Xenix/Minix/Linux for my 486 Notejet. All I have is a floppy and an Aeronet 350 PCMCIA network card. No optical drive of any sort. I'm wanting a somewhat modern Linux version with a package manager, perferably. I've tried Debian netinst floppies, but they just hang.

Please only suggest things you know have floppy-only netinstall disks, and I'd really like direct links since I am 'teh suxx0rz at teh g00glan'.
 
Gave up on DOS? :p

I'd recommend BSD, it tends to be lighter than Linux but handles very similar. Give FreeBSD or NetBSD a shot. The "package install" command is "pkg_add -r NAME".

On the bright side, the other really nice thing about Aironet 350 cards is that they're Atheros chipset and VERY well supported by *nix, even back when the wireless support was HORRIBLE (oh man, ndiswrapper... what a nightmare..).
 
How much RAM do you have? That will end up being the deciding factor in what you can and can't run. As far as actually installing the OS, there are a number of ways to go about it. The easiest is usually to pull the hard drive and put it in a machine of comparable speed (same processor architecture) and install that way. You can also usually load Linux from a DOS partition...I know Vector Linux comes with instructions for doing that, and I've done it with Slackware before.

Speaking of Slackware, if you've got the RAM for it, it's a good choice for older systems. You can grab an older version if you're RAM isn't sufficient for a modern kernel. Kernel size is the real limiting factor, as once it's loaded you can work from swap.

EDIT: OpenBSD might be a good option as well. I prefer it over the other BSDs mostly for its design philosophy (the entire core package is hand-checked for vulnerabilities). You can still install it with a single net install floppy, though you'll probably have better luck with a PCMCIA Ethernet card rather than wireless. 3Com PCMCIA (non-CardBus) Ethernet NICs are dirt cheap anymore, so it'd probably be worthwhile to grab one.
 
I'll go ahead and add my opinion and offer the explanation behind the different BSD distros. I do think BSD is the best choice btw or an old copy of turbolinux might also run on a 486 (I had that exact problem when I first tried playing with linux in the late 90's which was all the common named distros no longer support pre-pentium architecture). Lame. Turbolinux was cool enough that they actually answered a question I had while running the version that came with my router (free) AND explained that to me as well as some other suggested distributions then sent me a newer copy of the OS which was a version behind. They couldn't sell it so their policy was to offer the old copies up.

Anyway so the BSD distros have different goals in mind. I recommend it for your other distro also (or try BeOS heh) but I liked FreeBSD personally because I wanted to play with the most packages. So a quick description/purpose of the BSD distros (all are based pretty much on the same code base):

OpenBSD: Goal is to be the most secure distribution. They've done a good job other than bragging about not having any exploits which of course resulted in several published exploits. But it's a safe distro which you'll get to see some security measures. If you're running an older version however that may be moot as old OS's are not going to be secure so kinda kills the point.

NetBSD: Goal is to run on the most platforms and processors. Kinda like the linux crowd that wants to port linux to every processor out there whether it runs dog slow and nothing other than a shell. They've done lots of great work with compatible kernels for most systems out there.

FreeBSD: Goal is the port as many applications as they can to have the largest package base. That was why I chose it for my tinkering.. I wanted to play (and my last job used it as their primary open source operating system also) and it has the most packages available for you to play around with. That also may mean the most alpha packages but they do lots of work to get all these open source apps configured to be able to run under their OS including a linux compatibility package.

So I'd personally recommend FreeBSD although they're all good candidates. I'm not sure what versions are 486 compatible so you may end up with a pre v5.0 release but look it up. It's not that difficult to install and there are lots of good guides out there also like www.freebsddiary.org
 
barythrin said:
I do think BSD is the best choice btw or an old copy of turbolinux might also run on a 486 (I had that exact problem when I first tried playing with linux in the late 90's which was all the common named distros no longer support pre-pentium architecture).
Click to expand...
Most non-optimized distros should support 486 processors -- I know Slackware, Debian and OpenSUSE do. A few distros optimize for i586 or higher only, and distros like Arch Linux are optimized for i686 or x86_64 only.

While FreeBSD does have a really extensive package library, I'd still suggest you go with OpenBSD because of your limited RAM. You'll want at least 20 MB RAM for FreeBSD, anything else and it tends to run out during boot-up. I've successfully run Slackware 10.0 and OpenBSD 4.4 with a 486 and 8 MB RAM.
 
Laptop has 10 Megs of RAM. For some reason, Debian setup always freezes at 'Calibrating delay loop..'. Never can get past that point, which is a real pity. Debian is what I would LOVE to have on here, but it looks like that isn't going to happen. I'll try openBSD next, i guess.
 
You might be able to shoehorn Debian into 10 MB of RAM...if you have a comparable 486 system, plug the laptop's hard drive into it, add more RAM, and install there. You can save a /lot/ of RAM (and speed the system up a lot!) if you compile a monolithic kernel for the system.
 
True, but that is a lot of trouble for someone who doesn't know Linux like an expert.. I'm pretty experienced and I wouldn't touch that process with a ten foot pole..
 
Raven said:
True, but that is a lot of trouble for someone who doesn't know Linux like an expert.. I'm pretty experienced and I wouldn't touch that process with a ten foot pole..
Click to expand...
Compiling a kernel, especially a 2.6 series kernel, isn't all that hard. You can do it in an entirely menu-driven environment (ncurses, even). There are plenty of easy-to-follow guides online...even back in the 2.2 series days the guides were easy enough to follow! It's a good thing to do a few times, and once you see how fast a monolithic kernel runs, you'll probably end up compiling custom kernels fairly often.
 
I also looked around for Linux for my Contura 12 MB memory, it is not that easy, at least if you not prepared to make floppies.

I tried these ones BasicLinux, TinyCore, Featherlinux but be aware that BasicLinux start from dos and must reside on HDA1, it do not work if service partitions is installed.
http://www.volny.cz/basiclinux/
***Will definitly run on 10 MB***

http://www.tinycorelinux.com/
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/docs.htm
May need modifications to run

And if you get ***alot*** more RAM (32 MB) Puppy may even need 64 but should be able to run in 32
DSL
PUPPY
Deli Linux

JT
 
i have 4 MB of RAM in my Notejet 486C, and it runs Debian 2.1 "Slink" .... i've tried everything, and that is the most recent linux distro i've been able to have it run while still being functional. It boots in under a minute, and there's always apt for packages.

http://archive.debian.org/debian/dists/slink

you can even use apt-get over the internet like when it was the current debian release. just have your /etc/apt/sources.list file look like this:

Code: 
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian slink main contrib non-free

even apache 1.3.3-7 (love that version number) runs acceptably on it when i tried. have fun. :)

i have a nice setup on the thing, with a 2 GB dos/windows partition and the rest is linux which i can just start with loadlin.exe
 
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