DSF

Yeah, that's always a problem for that machine. I don't really want to go in blind because of the difficulty in recovering it when things go pear shaped. At the moment, it's working with Windows 98 on it (simply by copying the cab files to the drive and running setup from there - I used to have a parallel port Zip drive when I did that). So it is working for basic stuff so long as I don't do anything silly like connect it to the internet and risk viruses etc.

Was hoping there might be something small and suited to old hardware. Linux used to be ideal for resurrecting old machines, but most modern distros seem to have embraced bloat and need a good chunk of specifications just to run. I mean Ubuntu needs 1GB RAM and 5GB disk space. With that kind of bloated requirement, they may as well call the distro "Windows 7". Even the so-called "lightweight" versions of Ubuntu needs 256MB RAM and 2GB disk space. That's just crazy specs for what I'm trying to do.

My personal favourite distro on my other (more modern) machines is Puppy Linux on a bootable USB but, though that doesn't take up much space (and so could be installed alongside Windows while testing the old laptop), I think it needs far more resources than that old laptop has to offer (128-256MB RAM, for example).

Any ideas which distros will run with 16MB RAM and P120 chip? Obviously it's going to have to be a real basic GUI, but I can live with that. I did dabble with TCL awhile back on my netbook, but that might be a little too much "bare bones" - I'd like a distro that'll give me a step up from Windows 98, not a step down.

the last small liinux i used on an old compaq evo laptop for a friend was puppy linux, worked fine (although it did have a single usb which made life easier), the puppy forum has quoted as little as 128mb running puppy. It also has a "frugal" hard drive installation set of instructions to follow although they do not recommend it, preferring usb or optical drive.

Slitaz also gets good omments on old hardware but its site is down currently, supposed to be very fast and has hard drive installation options as well.

how about this Jonathan?? http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ or http://www.slackware.com/

Paul;31266 wrote:how about this Jonathan?? http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ or http://www.slackware.com/

Hmm, Slackware needs 64MB RAM but DSL doesn't. DSL looks like a more useful version of TCL. Might be worth investigating, particularly if it'll run off a CF card (the laptop has a PCMCIA port and I have a CF adapter for it somewhere) so I could try it out without mucking up the Windows install. I'll have to see if the laptop will boot to the PCMCIA, though.

Thanks!

i did think of dsl, but noticed in this review here - http://tuxradar.com/content/whats-best- ... nux-distro it had not been updated or supported for a little while.

That's worth bearing in mind. Thanks. I don't mind it being out-dated, so long as it's not going to suffer from security issues (that's my main concern about running Win98 on the laptop).