Linux or BSD distro for a Pentium MMX 200MHurtz w/ 32MB RAM

[CougTek]

I've been given an HP Vectra XA with a Pentium MMX 200MHz, 32MB of puny RAM and a 2.5GB hard drive (oh lucky me). The system is quite limited on ressources. It now has Win98SE installed on it, but the OS is out of shape and I don't currently have a Win98SE CD lying around so f**k to M$ operating systems on that box.

Some Linux and BSD distros are supposed to run quite well on ressources-limited systems. Which one would you recommend for that kind of hardware? My command line days are FAR away, so please don't tell me to use something like Slackware. I know Fedora Core, SuSe and Mandriva are competing hard with Microsoft for the bloating contest, so none of them would run on the Vectra. My favorite these days is Ubuntu, but I don't think it's slim enough to fit in that box.

FreeBSD 6.1 has just been released. Has its installer improved enough for a click-next mouseman to install it?

 

[Bozo]

Damm Small Linux??? 50MB

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Handruin]

I agree with Bozo. It was the first thing I thought of before I saw his post.

Unrelated, Open SuSe 10.1 was just released the other day, but that's too bulky for your situation.

 

[Howell]

I would also go with a Debian based distro. Knoppix has a live cd and does Ubuntu. It's going to have to stay text based I think.

The recommended system requirements for just Mozilla:

* Pentium 233 MHz
* 64 MB RAM
* 52 MB hard drive space

 

[Mercutio]

A guy I went to college with is still using a 486/66 with 16MB RAM as his primary computer. He has a VERY tightly tuned X installation that he runs when he needs to...

I don't have much to add to what others have suggested, but you might be better off with an old Linux distro of appropriate vintage. Something like RedHat 4 would probably work. There are probably security issues in doing that, but frankly there are security issues to using Win98, too.

 

[Handruin]

I'd be far happier leaving myself exposed with an old redhat install compared to an old windows install.

I was reading through the DSL page and they won't move to the 2.6 kernel because of the size increase (they claim to never grow beyond 50MB total install). They did say plenty of people are back-porting fixes to the 2.4, so you could still get updates I'd image for redhat 4.

 

[CougTek]

If there are fixes for RedHat 4, it isn't from RedHat themselves. You'd have to manually update the kernel and other elements. I think I still have a RedHat 6.1 CD resting somewhere.

I downloaded and burned DSL to a CD-RW, but the old HP junk can't read CD-RW. I still haven't tried to burn a CD-R to install DSL. Instead, I have updated and tried to fix the Win98SE installation that is already on the drive. Let me tell you that this box is outstandingly slow in safe mode. Running two anti-spywares wasn't too bad, but Avast anti-virus has been running since 4pm this afternoon and I'm not sure it is half-way through (it now 11h20pm here). Scandisk (that was also quite long) told me that there are 304KB of bad sectors on the drive.

To make it more usable, I'll try to increase the amount of RAM to 64MB. The motherboard is based on the i430HX chipset, so it would serve nothing to go past 64MB : that would only slowdown the system even more.

I need a Win98SE system to refresh my memory for job-related issues. Assuming Avast is done before Monday morning, that'll be my official Win98 testing toy. If not, I'll sacrifice a CD-R and try DSL on it.

 

[CougTek]

And there's no way I'll install Mozilla Firefox on that box. For old junks like this one, Opera does the job a lot better. That or an old version (think 0.4) of Phoenix before it became fat and changed name to Firebird and afterward to Firefox.

 

[Mercutio]

TX and VX were the memory-limited chipsets. HX supported as I recall supported 256MB.

 

[CougTek]

8 hours, 37 minutes and 32 seconds later, the virus scan is finished and nothing has been found (the drive is clean). I have to disable the virus-protection in order to make it usable though. Since about the only thing I'll do with this box will be web surfing (safe sites), I doubt I'll need it anyway. No mail on this box.

I thought the TX was the chipset without the memory limitation problem since it is more recent than the HX (oldest) and VX (pure garbage). If I can go up to just 128MB, that system will be very usable under Win98. I don't remember if the HX430 accept EDO RAM. Google oh Google, can you answer me?

And I've just found out that the Matrox card can't go higher than 1152x864 in 16bit colors

 

[CougTek]

Found! It does. And it supports up to 512MB of RAM. Now that would be insane. I have to try.

 

[LiamC]

So long as the HX had suitable Tag RAMS's onboard it could cache up to 256MB. Some cheapie manufacturers only had 6-bit tag RAM's, and it would only cache 64MB. Some BIOS's needed a large cache setting as well.

You Matrox card probably only has 1MB or 2MB of VRAM--not enough.

 

[Santilli]

I have both RedHat 9, and a copy of 98 Second edition.
If you'd like either. or both, just pay shipping.

Greg
94598

 

[CougTek]

I have a Win98SE CD at work and if RedHat 9 would agree to install itself on that Pentium 200MMX, it would run VERY slowly.

Thanks for the offer though.

 

[Howell]

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_save_memory

A great site in and of itself.

 

[CougTek]

Thanks for the link Howell. I'll try those tips sometime in the future.

I've not found any EDO RAM larger than 16MB, so the maximum RAM I've been able to put in this system was 96MB (6 slots on motherboard). The system will be sold for ~30$. Except for the hard drive, it is relatively quiet. It should go quickly as it runs Win98 relatively well.

 

[Mercutio]

What is a $40 PC?

Kind of related to Coug's recent topic, someone just asked me if I have an old PC I could sell for $40.

I have several computers sitting around, from P5/166s to Celeron 300As to P3/800s, that might somehow be considered for that price range.

The main problem I have with that specific price is that a Window license, even Windows 98 (this PC must have Windows 98, since it needs to be a platform for AOL9) is probably worth $40 all by itself. By definition, the system needs 128MB RAM (probably worth about $15 all on its own) for AOL and also a winmodem.

In what bizarro world is it worth a couple hours of my time to make sure that $40 PC is working properly before I sell it?

 

[Santilli]

Just to clear out the basement? I'm ebaying a Dell like that, right now.

S