Arch Linux

RevertTS

Member

Registered: 2006-02-25

Posts: 85

Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

I have an old Portege 610 CT laptop that I decided to ressurect.
It's specs are something like...

90mhz
40 megs of ram
800 meg harddrive

I'm acquiring an old Toshiba floppy drive so I can actually do something with it.  My question is, what distro would you suggest for such a machine? 
The laptop will probably never be connected to the internet (which is why I'm thinking Arch might not be the best idea), and it'll have to be something I can install entirely from floppies (not looking forward to that  :? ).  Mostly I just want vi, gcc, and nethack on there; I'm not planning on trying to run X or anything.

Any suggestions or general tips are much appreciated!

Edit:  Is an all floppy install even really feasible?

syd

Member

From: Auckland, NZ

Registered: 2006-01-22

Posts: 155

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

Heres a list of linux distros that install from a floppy.
http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~thelinuxguy/ … x/all.html

The other option is to install an old distro like debian 2.0 which can be installed from muiltiple floppys.

Have fun.

benplaut

Member

Registered: 2006-06-13

Posts: 383

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

aaahhhh, lucky

That powerful machine is starting to make my Thinkpad 701c (75mhz, 16mb RAM, 540mb HDD) look a bit old

I run slack 7.2 on it... took a long time to get it working (and alot of floppies!), but it's pretty damn fast.

I wonder if i can get some MAME going...

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

I wonder if i can get some MAME going...

Probably not, but please do tell if you can

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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

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

btw, about the question. I would have to recommend puppylinux for all the good things i have heard about it. I know it's X but i think it will run fast regardless if what i hear is true

also this might be of use:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Li … r_machines

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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

rhfrommn

Member

From: Minnesota

Registered: 2005-01-13

Posts: 99

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

One other thought with a machine that old is to run some other super-lightweight OS.  I remember reading an article about one called MenuetOS and I downloaded it.  The thing runs off of a single floppy.  I could boot my PC up with it and do a few things but never did much other than that one session to test it out.

Here's their website if you want to have a look:
http://www.menuetos.net/

I know there are others like that too.  I guess my point is that if you're looking for a lightweight OS to run on a very old system from floppies there are other options besides linux to consider.  I'm not sure if any of those would meet your needs but they might be worth looking at before deciding what you'll use.

And here's a site with a whole bunch of OS choices listed, some linux, some not. 
http://www.freebyte.com/operatingsystems/

Mr Green

Forum Fellow

From: U.K.

Registered: 2003-12-21

Posts: 5,903

Website

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

DSL.....

my2cents

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Mr Green

RevertTS

Member

Registered: 2006-02-25

Posts: 85

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

Right now it's running BasicLinux.  I was going to try out AlfaLinux, but all the documentation was in Italian (which I don't speak).  I haven't attempted to install the other packages I need yet, so I'm not sure whether or not I'll stick with it (it's likely I'll try to switch to an older version of Slackware).

If I end up wanting X, I'll probably install DSL or Puppy. 

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. 

Mr Green

Forum Fellow

From: U.K.

Registered: 2003-12-21

Posts: 5,903

Website

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

DSL .... you do not have to have X installed....puppy not so sure about that one

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Mr Green

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

Vector?

jerem

Member

From: France

Registered: 2005-01-15

Posts: 310

Re: Old Laptop: Suggested Distro?

Nothing better than Slackware for that machine, imho.

Btw, what about looking on the BSD side of the force ?
(OpenBSD or NetBSD in particular)