21 replies to this topic

[[pat]]

any ideas on a distro that will run smoothly on a 486 w/ 16 megs of ram?

[hacnslash]

try some old slackware versio, like 3 or 4...

[psychopuppy]

yeah a distro like slackware(any version) will work fine in console but forget about X.

[hacnslash]

not any version, 9.0 needs i think 32 megs and to compile anything in less than a YEAR you need something better than a 486, so get one of the older versions, or even better check out
linuxfromscratch.org

[bland_inquisitor]

i just bought a 486DX2 66 with 4MB of ram, and im going to put Damn Small Linux on it... ill let yall know how it goes. damn small by the way is only 50 megs for a full install

[Y0ungBra1n]

isn't DSL a run off of Knoppix? BTW, i also have DSL, but never have been able to use it...

[hacnslash]

hey bland, didn't you say in your post about going to that garage sale that it has 8 megs of ram

[psychopuppy]

not any version, 9.0 needs i think 32 megs and to compile anything in less than a YEAR you need something better than a 486, so get one of the older versions, or even better check out
linuxfromscratch.org

oh, slack 8.1 runs fine on my p166 with 16mb of ram. I haven't tried 9 yet but I will soon.

and yeah, compiling takes a while

[bland_inquisitor]

yeah, i said it had 8, but upon reflection, it has 4

[hacnslash]

i have slack 9 running on a p166 wit 64 megs of ram, kde doesn't work on my 2 meg matrox grrafix card tho....fluxbox does......

[[pat]]

question: will x run ok with slack 4 on my 486?

[vooduHAL]

Probably, but it would be damned painful. Try Free/Net/Open BSD. I've had it run on very, very old hardware. I use to use OpenBSD on an old 486 66Mhz laptop with 24MB. It ran great.

[[pat]]

vooduhal: what version of freeBSD?

[hacnslash]

also, try blackbox or fluxbox or some other light windowmanager, DO NOT try gnome or kde as they will not even start.....

[AXiD]

I would definalty go with one of two things

1. Like voodu said Open/Net/Free BSD, any version will work their small compact and powerfull at the same time
2. Try using a Live Evaluation. I don't know much about these since I've never personally used one, but it's like running linux without the install. No hard drive problems. Then again your 486 may not even have a cdrom (oh i remember the days...)

[twirlz]

Probably, but it would be damned painful. Try Free/Net/Open BSD. I've had it run on very, very old hardware. I use to use OpenBSD on an old 486 66Mhz laptop with 24MB. It ran great.

im a true bsd lamer!!! i can't even get free bsd to boot to install!
heard great things about it tho!

[hacnslash]

yeah, knoppix needs way more ram than he's got...

[v90]

I know Open can run within 4 megs of RAM and my full install (With X and everything) was like 260 megs so I don't think an install without X and extranous stuff will be too big. But X on a 486 will be tight... If not nearly impossible.

[hacnslash]

maybe you should try a version of X that was contemporary to the 486 proccesor, who knows, it might actually work

[AXiD]

Actually I've got an idea that no one has thought of....


Get a new comp!