Arch Linux

mahyar

Member

From: Victoria, BC, CA

Registered: 2005-06-21

Posts: 20

Website

Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

I recently got an ooolldd ibm thinkpad 390 and want to put archlinux on it.    It's a pentium 2 so it's i686 compatible, but it only has a 3.8 GB hard drive and 128MB of ram (and to get sound working you have to use some isa type module stuff).  Do you think archlinux would just sputter and die on this or do you think it would be viable?

See http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:390 for more details

ujjwal

Member

Registered: 2006-01-31

Posts: 27

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

I use Arch on a 266MHz celeron with 128 MB RAM on a 3GB partition. It runs fine. If you run X, run it with a desktop like XFCE or something lighter like IceWM, EDE etc.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

Or put in another 128 MB of RAM and install KDE.

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

I recently got an ooolldd ibm thinkpad 390 and want to put archlinux on it.    It's a pentium 2 so it's i686 compatible, but it only has a 3.8 GB hard drive and 128MB of ram (and to get sound working you have to use some isa type module stuff).  Do you think archlinux would just sputter and die on this or do you think it would be viable?

The ISA sound will be some work, but ISA stuff always is. You can get help on IRC though (if you choose the right time). For the rest, I'd think the hard drive is small, so don't install too much (like KDE, gnome or OOo). The 128MB RAM can be a problem, so you need some swapspace and be careful what applications you use.

ujjwal

Member

Registered: 2006-01-31

Posts: 27

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

I have an ISA card (Yamaha OPL3) and it is picked up by udev without trouble. Your mileage may vary.

Most non gnome/kde applications should run well on your machine, but stay away from either of those two desktop environments. KDE might run, but it would eat a good chunk of your hard disk space.

ToastedToad

Member

From: Sequim, WA

Registered: 2006-03-08

Posts: 79

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

Just installed Arch on a pII, 233 MHz, w/96MB ram. Runnin fluxbox. Kinda  slow, but it works great as a music player in the shop:)

kth5

Member

Registered: 2004-04-29

Posts: 657

Website

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

installed arch with kde 3.5.2 on a 233mhz g3 iMac with only 96 megs of ram. ran fine but luckily it had an ati mach64 built in so that i could get some 2d acceleration in X. if i disabled it, the machine was quite unusable with X.

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I recognize that while theory and practice are, in theory, the same, they are, in practice, different. -Mark Mitchell

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

ion3 is the fastest wm i've ever used; in responsiveness and ESPECIALLY in 'user-efficiency'. And i use that on a P4 2.5 GHz with 512 Mb ram so...

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KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

mahyar

Member

From: Victoria, BC, CA

Registered: 2005-06-21

Posts: 20

Website

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

!#$%&

The damn thing can't read CD-Rs correctly and it doesn't have a network jack (I have a PCMICA card that does networking for it, but I dont think it can do network booting over that).  Is there any way to install arch using floppies?

twiistedkaos

Member

Registered: 2006-05-20

Posts: 666

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

http://archlinux.org/archdoc.html

just follow the floppy parts.

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

!#$%&

The damn thing can't read CD-Rs correctly and it doesn't have a network jack (I have a PCMICA card that does networking for it, but I dont think it can do network booting over that).  Is there any way to install arch using floppies?

Yes, ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/images/

mahyar

Member

From: Victoria, BC, CA

Registered: 2005-06-21

Posts: 20

Website

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

The 390 has a usb port.  Could I, after booting up w/ floppies use some SD card w/ a singular reader and the USB port as my package source?  How would I setup the 1GB SD card?  Do I just copy the contents of the CD to the root of the SD card?  How would I tell archlinux to use it as a source?

apeiro

Daddy

From: Victoria, BC, Canada

Registered: 2002-08-12

Posts: 771

Website

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

The USB addon disk has basic usb-storage support.  If you can get that loaded up and plug in your SD card, you should be able to install packages off of it.

Load the USB add-on:

# loaddisk /dev/fd0

Load the proper module:

# modprobe usb-storage

Mount the SD card (assuming sda1):

# mount /dev/sda1 /src

Run the installer:

# /arch/setup

Select a CD install when asked if you want CD or FTP.  After you set up your destination partitions and select the "Select Packages" option, the installer will ask you whether you want to mount the CD or manually mount the packages from elsewhere.  The two options are "Mount the CD-ROM and install from there" or "I have manually mounted the source media".  Select the latter.

Also, make sure the packages exist in /arch/pkg on your SD card, so when you mount the thing under /src, the packages will be in /src/arch/pkg. 

Good luck.

mahyar

Member

From: Victoria, BC, CA

Registered: 2005-06-21

Posts: 20

Website

Re: Archlinux on a Pentium II 233Mhz

After putting in the scsi and usb addon disks into the system, and doing

modprobe usb-storage
modprobe uhci-hcd

and seeing what happens w/ dmesg I notice that the usb-storage module detect the device "at address 1" or something like that but I can't find any sort of device file associated w/ it to use.    What should i do?