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What linux should I install?
- Thread starter ppo
- Start date
Jorg
Veteran Member
Important is to know how much RAM you have, as this is often the limiting factor.
glitch
Veteran Member
Slackware Linux is a good choice for older systems. Depending on your RAM limitations, you may want to install an older version of Slackware. I had no problems running 10.0 on a 486 with 20 MB RAM in console-only mode.
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
RAM is the most important specification. Check out the other threads which are duplicates of this one. CPU speed is not a performance issue with Linux. HDD size is only relevant for your archives.
Try Dammed Small Linux, aka DSL. It has about the lowest resource needs of practical everyday distros that will run Firefox etc. If that doesn't work, you can try to pare things down or use a really ancient distro. That is a hard way to go. MS-Windows is best for low RAM situations but in th *nix world then BSD has very good RAM usage. I like FreeBSD. Honestly, I don't think most people would notice what OS is running under a GUI anyway. Which brings me to my last point. Did you want to run Linux with a GUI? It is a very good OS without all that eye candy. FreeBSD is a dream to use on the command line.
Try Dammed Small Linux, aka DSL. It has about the lowest resource needs of practical everyday distros that will run Firefox etc. If that doesn't work, you can try to pare things down or use a really ancient distro. That is a hard way to go. MS-Windows is best for low RAM situations but in th *nix world then BSD has very good RAM usage. I like FreeBSD. Honestly, I don't think most people would notice what OS is running under a GUI anyway. Which brings me to my last point. Did you want to run Linux with a GUI? It is a very good OS without all that eye candy. FreeBSD is a dream to use on the command line.
Caluser2000
Banned
Yip plenty of ram if you want a gui. I've got Mandrake 6.1 installed on the 486 Presario 64megs running WindowMaker. Any RH 6 based distro will run fine. The good thing about DSL is it can be installed on the hdd as Debian (i forget the varient). Its creator has now moved on to Tiny Core Linux and DSL is no longer being developed I believe. Here's the link anyway http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
There's also a few 2 fd disk distros available as well.
SliTaz may be usefull too http://www.slitaz.org/en/about/index.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SliTaz_GNU/Linux
You may want to read this too
. http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
Do keep us posted on your progress.
There's also a few 2 fd disk distros available as well.
SliTaz may be usefull too http://www.slitaz.org/en/about/index.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SliTaz_GNU/Linux
You may want to read this too
. http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm Do keep us posted on your progress.
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Yeah, it's a holy war out there on distros ;-) I really like FreeBSD (BSD not linux) but that's because they've worked to get the most number of software packages compiled and working on their OS vs OpenBSD (security/stability) and NetBSD (ported to the most devices). Linux most are fine but I see most geeks are liking the non-corporate flavors so Slackware, (I like TurboLinux), Debian, and Ubuntu (or Kubuntu for KDE but KDE is not likely gonna run on your system it's too clunky as are most linux GUIs).. I know folks who run everything though. I would try a live CD of some distro and see how you like it or how you like the install. Effectively you'll just be wanting one that you can customize not to install Gnome or KDE (those are the two mainstream but very large and slow GUI front ends for linux) and that has a somewhat easy to understand package management. Preferably one that does good dependency checking which maybe they all try to do that now but after a year of not update each system it's interesting to learn how much of a pain it is (most folks will recommend rebuilding from scratch above updating an old untouched system).
Don't let it scare ya though.. it's a fun system that you can blow away if you want to. So download a bunch and see which one finds some nice term that you like or has the best looking logo.
Don't let it scare ya though.. it's a fun system that you can blow away if you want to. So download a bunch and see which one finds some nice term that you like or has the best looking logo.
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
I agree with everything barythrin says. I'd just like to add that FreeBSD has another real plus. It has a manual which works. You can buy the book or use it on-line. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it has served me well and if you've ever tried to do a search on Linux instructions, you'll appreciate a manual which is complete and up-to-date.
BTW, an Ubuntu option which I've used several times, is to install the server version and then put a GUI on afterwards. Ubuntu server is smaller and quicker to install and brings you to the command line. At the end of the install you get to chose which servers you want - just chose none. After it is up, just type "sudo apt-get install fluxbox". It doesn't get any easier than that. Fluxbox is a very functional desktop and it is minimal and fast. It will launch all the KDE and Gnome apps just like any other GUI. Of course, you can use Fluxbox with any other distro as well.
BTW, an Ubuntu option which I've used several times, is to install the server version and then put a GUI on afterwards. Ubuntu server is smaller and quicker to install and brings you to the command line. At the end of the install you get to chose which servers you want - just chose none. After it is up, just type "sudo apt-get install fluxbox". It doesn't get any easier than that. Fluxbox is a very functional desktop and it is minimal and fast. It will launch all the KDE and Gnome apps just like any other GUI. Of course, you can use Fluxbox with any other distro as well.
Jorg
Veteran Member
I have to second that. Because of the manual, FreeBSD was almost the only thing I could get my old WLAN card to work with.
Yip plenty of ram if you want a gui. I've got Mandrake 6.1 installed on the 486 Presario 64megs running WindowMaker. Any RH 6 based distro will run fine. The good thing about DSL is it can be installed on the hdd as Debian (i forget the varient). Its creator has now moved on to Tiny Core Linux and DSL is no longer being developed I believe. Here's the link anyway http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
There's also a few 2 fd disk distros available as well.
SliTaz may be usefull too http://www.slitaz.org/en/about/index.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SliTaz_GNU/Linux
You may want to read this too
Do keep us posted on your progress.
Thanks a lot, that's what I was looking for.
And I already know linux a little, as a matter of fact I'm browsing this forum with firefox on ubuntu, my problem is installing an OS.
Caluser2000
Banned
You've got a few other choices of OS/Gui combinations. But they're outside the scope of this thread though .
.
Caluser2000
Banned
FreeDos, MSDos 7.1, Open/DrDos or a variant, one of the earlier NT variants (4 for example), OS/2? Tons of free software out there to keep them usefull.
Mind you if you're familiar with Linux it makes sence to go that route or FreeBSD as others have suggested.
Mind you if you're familiar with Linux it makes sence to go that route or FreeBSD as others have suggested.
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Another popular choice back in the day was to install either a removable drive bay or more than one hard drive and swap them out when you wanted another OS. Install Os/2 on one of them and play around remove that drive, pop in your linux drive and back to linux. This of course was for folks and a time where multi-booting wasn't as feasible due to hard drive space. Now adays yes you could practice installing on different partitions and getting them both listed in your boot loader (not very difficult and good practice to know/understand anyway).
On the bright side a lot of operating systems aren't as difficult to install as they used to be, as your post suggest the most difficulty you'll have is finding the right distro for the performance of that system. But it's only time if you like to play around, burn a few to CD and see if you can get them to install. If so, great, if not maybe an internet guide to help, and if it seems like it may be too new or complicated move on to the next toy OS.
Another fun one btw would be BeOS.
On the bright side a lot of operating systems aren't as difficult to install as they used to be, as your post suggest the most difficulty you'll have is finding the right distro for the performance of that system. But it's only time if you like to play around, burn a few to CD and see if you can get them to install. If so, great, if not maybe an internet guide to help, and if it seems like it may be too new or complicated move on to the next toy OS.
Another fun one btw would be BeOS.
My problem is that I can't transfer any files to a floppy disk, because my main floppy disk drive is broken, and I found out yesterday that the computer isn't recognizing the cd drive.
I have Windows 2000 on an HD, but I can't get the computer to recognize the HD, and the computer as it is turned on, asks for the system disk which I don't have.
What can I do now?
I have Windows 2000 on an HD, but I can't get the computer to recognize the HD, and the computer as it is turned on, asks for the system disk which I don't have.
What can I do now?
I'd like to keep the computer as it was originally, just like a classic car.
I'd like to use Dos or Windows or OS/2, I'll just use linux if I can't install nothing else.
And I have the floppy disks for the Windows NT 4.0, it's just that the installer asks for the cd rom and I don't have it and my cd drive isn't working.
I second Damn Small Linux but it's worth noting that it seems to have stalled in development. On the upside that means that it's also frozen in a state that's good for old hardware. That OS screamed on my P2 300Mhz laptop (which is now broken) years ago. There's also "DSL-N" if HDD space isn't much of a concern - almost equally fast but a bit more useful.
As for getting Windows on there, you can install from a network drive - get a network card and a DOS network driver and map a drive.
As for getting Windows on there, you can install from a network drive - get a network card and a DOS network driver and map a drive.
Ok so a few hitches in your way. The computer prompting you to insert a system disk or complaining that a non-system disk was found is just it's way of telling you "Hey, I don't have an operating system.. I'm done unless you have something for me to boot off of." Check your BIOS settings if it's not seeing your hard drive it may not be cabled, jumpered (single/master or cable select), or may not be set up for auto detect in the BIOS on the adapter you have it plugged into (IDE1/Primary or IDE2/Secondary). Could be a similar issue with the CDROM. Some older equipment didn't like cable select and needed to be jumpered specifically for master/slave.
So I would suggest that the parts are cheap and common enough you might want to look around to just replace the cdrom or floppy if they're giving you problems. Oh.. also some older Pentiums didn't support booting off CD so that's another thing that could be the case. In that case you'd boot off a floppy with cdrom support or with a boot loader installed and then jump to the cdrom.
The only other thing you could try is installing dos with cdrom drivers on a hard drive while it's on your main system and then boot it on the other computer since dos was simple enough to be able to move from system to system since it didn't utilize that many drivers unless loaded.
So I would suggest that the parts are cheap and common enough you might want to look around to just replace the cdrom or floppy if they're giving you problems. Oh.. also some older Pentiums didn't support booting off CD so that's another thing that could be the case. In that case you'd boot off a floppy with cdrom support or with a boot loader installed and then jump to the cdrom.
The only other thing you could try is installing dos with cdrom drivers on a hard drive while it's on your main system and then boot it on the other computer since dos was simple enough to be able to move from system to system since it didn't utilize that many drivers unless loaded.
Caluser2000
Banned
Folk seem to be giving away NT4 CDs these days. It shouldn't be to hard to get hold of one along with booklet and installation code. I've been lucky enough to get two in the last month.
It's no good that the hardware is playing up. barythrin's covered it well in his post above.
The reason Win2k isn't loading is probably because the drive is too large for the bios to recognise correctly. This can be overcome in a couple of ways. A hard drive controller with it's own bios or overlay software. Overlay software probably is the least ideal if you want to extract important data of the drive.
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