A friend gave me a Win 98 Toshiba laptop with 64 mbs RAM and a Pentium 2 MMX processor. I was wondering if it would be worth putting a different OS on it. I know I want to go with Linux, but does anyone have a suggestion to what flavor?
1) Either get DOS, or Linux kernel+bash, running on it.
2) Try and jury rig a contemporary OS meant for mobile devices (OpenMoko?) into running on it.
3) Try installing one of those Rescue CD or USB drive versions of Linux onto it. You know, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, etc.
As a note, if you get Linux running on it with a GUI, I'd strongly recommend Gnome.
http://www.xubuntu.org/ is pretty lightweight while still being easy to install, I think
linux with icewm or fluxbox, i recommend debian
I've got a laptop like that. I made a minimal debian installation with textmode only, then manually installed X11 with the evilwm window manager. But, that's a little advanced, so if you're new to linux I wouldn't recommend it.
As an alternative to linux, NetBSD and Minix v3 (http://www.minix3.org/) are both good for lightweight systems.
> I know I want to go with Linux,
Why? Have you considered Plan9, the BSDs, or Minix?
> I know I want to go with Linux,
Why? Have you considered 95, NT 3.5, or retaining 98?
No, I don't want to have anything Windows on there.
Oh, and how do y'all make the text green like that? (>I know I want to go with Linux)
>Green magic!
Sometimes it's gone,
>sometimes it's there.
>******* can't green
Sry, I had to say that
For beginning Linux users I recomend Fedora or Debian. Ubuntu's nice, but it's really regarded as a n00b OS, and I personally don't like it. Mandravia is also really nice, it keeps its packages up to date better than any distro I've ever used. Gentoo or FreeBSD with portage are great for running lightweight systems, or any type of system for that matter, but are a bit more difficult to deal with.
Also, normally I'd recomend GNOME, but with such low ram, something like Fluxbox or Blackbox are probably better. If you must have a full desktop enviroment, xfce is probably better.
Xubuntu is probably your best bet if you don't care that you're using Ubuntu. Else, Fedora, Debian stable, Mandravia, in that order.
Maybe you could explain what the fuck this 'Mandravia' things is?
>>14 it was a mistake. Apologies if I offended your senses.
Kubuntu ftw.
I would go honestly with Damn Small Linux. It can be loaded onto the hard drive, takes up practically nothing in space and runs FAST. Fedora, SUSE and several others are being released are TOO HEAVY. That means tons of shit you likely will never use they included.
>>17
50mb ISO is all well and good, but are you sure that a first-time *NIX user can install and use it effectively?
also lol 2.4 kernel
>>17
The heaviness depends on what applications you're installing. It has very little to do with the base system. The base system is designed to run optimally on almost any system of any architecture, it's the rest that varies. You could run almost any distro with just something like flux. It will just look ugly. No applications are ever forced, you just need to edit them yourself when you're installing. Also,
>>18
Both points, agree.
Between 2.4 and 2.6 the kernel made a huge jump in compiled size. DSL is supposed to run off 64MB or larger pen drives, so it's actually an important decision. If you're running it on a drive measured in GB, you can at least try replacing it.
>>20
The 2.6 kernel works just fine on my Nintendo DS. What the hell could you possibly be running Linux on that the 2.6 kernel is too big?