thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

doorknob60 · 2008-11-26 03:27:22

Well, on my old laptop (400 Mhz i586 CPU, 192 MB RAM, 4.5 GB HD), the Debian isntallation got screwed, the keyboard and trackpad stopped working, even though they work in BIOS, and its ~2.4 GB partition has had at most 300 MB of free space due to unnecessary Debian bloat (it has Openbox even...). I want Arch, but it's an i586 CPU (don't suggest the i586 Arch articlwe form the Wiki, it's not worth the trouble). To make matters worse, the CD drive is busted. I want to install a new distro on it (keeping its current dual boot with Windows 98 for those old games I used to play as a kid that only work in Win9x). I'm limited to these things to somehow manage to install a nice light distro, that's fairly up to date and with a good package manager (I like apt and pacman, haven't really used others) but doesn't take up as much space:

A Windows 98 Install (Maybe similar to Wubi except installs to its own partition?)
A flash drive (BIOS can't directly boot from it)
A floppy drive (can I put something on a floppy that allows the computer to boot off USB or something like that)

I need a distro and a way to install it, yeah this is a weird situation on a dying laptop but I want to do something with it

vinegaroon · 2008-11-26 06:10:26

Slackware?
Also you should try dosbox for old win 9x games.

mrunion · 2008-11-26 14:44:36

Maybe see if the Vector Linux distro will help you out any here?

elmer_42 · 2008-11-26 16:53:01

If you are looking for a lightweight i586 distro you may get more responses in the Arch64 & Other Architectures section.

Gullible Jones · 2008-11-26 18:54:37

Hmm. I would suggest Slitaz, but it's a laptop... I'd say Slackware would be a good choice. Although, it is very easy to avoid bloat on Debian - just do aptitude install -R and recommended packages won't be installed.

Edit: Alternatively you could try a BSD... OpenBSD is particularly nice in having APM support right out of the box. You just install it and that's it.

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2008-11-26 18:56:34)

phrakture · 2008-11-26 19:47:53

wine and dosbox might solve your dependence on the Win98 install too 8) Unless you really like Windows 98, heh

sand_man · 2008-11-26 23:29:27

phrakture wrote:

wine and dosbox might solve your dependence on the Win98 install too 8) Unless you really like Windows 98, heh

I have fond memories of Windows 98

moljac024 · 2008-11-26 23:47:23

sand_man wrote:

phrakture wrote:
wine and dosbox might solve your dependence on the Win98 install too 8) Unless you really like Windows 98, heh
I have fond memories of Windows 98

Who doesn't ?
I just keep delaying it but I will have to set me up a nice Windows 98SE virtual machine....

Last edited by moljac024 (2008-11-26 23:48:04)

Dusty · 2008-11-26 23:49:08

moljac024 wrote:

sand_man wrote:
phrakture wrote:
wine and dosbox might solve your dependence on the Win98 install too 8) Unless you really like Windows 98, heh
I have fond memories of Windows 98
Who doesn't ?

Me!! I never used Windows 98. Did I miss something?

Dusty

peets · 2008-11-27 03:34:32

Dusty wrote:

moljac024 wrote:
sand_man wrote:
I have fond memories of Windows 98
Who doesn't ?
Me!! I never used Windows 98. Did I miss something?
Dusty

When Windows 98 was the big thing, people didn't talk about the "Blue Screen Of Death". It occured so regularly, and we were so familiar with it, that we just called it the "Blue Screen". I first played Starcraft on Windows 98 though.

doorknob60 · 2008-11-27 04:25:08

Yeah I know about Wine and Dosbox, but there's still the big problem of actually getting something installed on it :-P And can someone explain the type of package management Slackware uses and how it compares to pacman or apt? And about OpenBSD, I'd be up to it, assuming it would support my Atheros wireless card (works with Madwifi on Linux), Java, and it wouldn't take more than ~1-1.5 GB of space with a fully functional Openbox (or similar) setup. And it had a good package manager, and of course if I could find a method of installation. EDIT: Wow, OpenBSD supports floppy installation? Wonder if I have any working floppies...lol. EDIT: Found info on OpenBSD package management, looks good enough for me http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html

Last edited by doorknob60 (2008-11-27 04:36:51)

Gullible Jones · 2008-11-27 04:31:24

If madwifi supports your wireless, OpenBSD's ath driver probably will. It supports my AR5007EG...

As for package management, it's not nearly on par with pacman, but it works (especially with the help of the pkg_mgr package).

Wine is a problem though, OpenBSD's Wine package is horribly out of date.

(Maybe FreeBSD would be a better bet... I'm not sure if its kernel is compiled with apm support by default though. Or you could give DragonFlyBSD a try, it's kind of experimental but has some advanced features...)

doorknob60 · 2008-11-27 04:43:44

TBH, I don't really plan on using Wine on that laptop, since the ATI drivers (at least in Linux) produced terribly bad graphics compared to Windows, so that's not a big problem really. I would want Zsnes (or another SNES emulator), Firefox (or another browser), a Java plugin, and that's really about it :-P And does OpenBSD need network during install (when installed via floppy), because Wireless is its only source of internet :-P Would I be able to get it up and running with internet form just floppies, and then install the rest of the things I need like X, Openbox, etc from there? Or does the ath driver not come by default? Sorry for all the questions, but I just wanna make sure it will work before I go digging through my closet for floppies :-P I'll google about FreeBSD too.

Gullible Jones · 2008-11-27 04:47:10

doorknob60 wrote:

TBH, I don't really plan on using Wine on that laptop, since the ATI drivers (at least in Linux) produced terribly bad graphics compared to Windows, so that's not a big problem really. I would want Zsnes (or another SNES emulator), Firefox (or another browser), a Java plugin, and that's really about it :-P

Yeah it should provide that stuff.

And does OpenBSD need network during install (when installed via floppy), because Wireless is its only source of internet :-P

Yeah, needs internet access for a floppy install I think. Though maybe you could use the floppy to load the CD - does your laptop have a CD drive?

At any rate, I *think* you should be able to set up the wireless, but I'm not sure.

Would I be able to get it up and running with internet form just floppies, and then install the rest of the things I need like X, Openbox, etc from there? Or does the ath driver not come by default? Sorry for all the questions, but I just wanna make sure it will work before I go digging through my closet for floppies :-P I'll google about FreeBSD too.

ath driver is compiled into the kernel the installer uses, so yeah, it should be possible. Haven't been able to try it though.

doorknob60 · 2008-11-27 05:03:14

As said in my first post, it has a CD drive that magically stopped working about a week or two after I bought it. I had previousy experimented with about 5 different distros on it, then right after I install Debian it stopped working. Luckily, I wanted to keep Debian so it was pretty good timing I guess, but yeah. I could replace it or use a USB one, but I don't feel like spending any more monkey on this piece of junk. But yeah if I could set up wireless during installation then that would probably work, assuming it had the tools I need to set the SSID, WEP key, etc. Like iwconfig and dcpcd or dhclient, does it come with those programs? Remember I also have a Flash Drive so if there's any floppy bootloader things that allow indirect booting of USB flash drives and instructions for putting an ISO on a Flash drive in a bootable fashion, then that might work better than floppies.

Gullible Jones · 2008-11-27 05:20:54

Oh... Yeah, there's Smart Boot Manager. Very useful, put it on a floppy and you should be able to boot from the flash drive.

doorknob60 · 2008-11-27 06:02:22

Nice, now I need a way to turn an iso into a bootable flash drive image, then I can distro experiment all I want ...*cough*

EDIT: Wow I feel stupid, the reason the trackpad and the keyboard wouldn't work is low battery *facepalm* Now after searching through Synaptic and removing unneeded stuff (I did this befgore, but ack then I didn't really know what I actually needed, I removed over 400 MB of leftover gnome libs and CUPS stuff from installing xfce that I thought I got rid of). So for now I might not do anything, although Debian is still taking a little more than I'd like, it's to an acceptable degree now. Although I'd still like to test the BSDs, maybe on Vbox and if I like I might put them on my craptop. If anyone knows how to put an iso onto a flash drive in a bootable fashion I'd really like to know though

Last edited by doorknob60 (2008-11-27 07:50:30)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-11-26 03:27:22

thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#2 2008-11-26 06:10:26

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#3 2008-11-26 14:44:36

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#4 2008-11-26 16:53:01

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#5 2008-11-26 18:54:37

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#6 2008-11-26 19:47:53

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#7 2008-11-26 23:29:27

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#8 2008-11-26 23:47:23

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#9 2008-11-26 23:49:08

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#10 2008-11-27 03:34:32

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#11 2008-11-27 04:25:08

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#12 2008-11-27 04:31:24

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#13 2008-11-27 04:43:44

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#14 2008-11-27 04:47:10

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#15 2008-11-27 05:03:14

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

#16 2008-11-27 05:20:54

Re: thinking what to do with an old i586 laptop

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