ok i have an old computer from say 1990 it has 10 megs ram, a 66 mhz 486 processor, and a 167 megabyte hard drive. Its now running windows 3.1. Ive been thinking about putting linux on it for a while (once my parents finally decommission it). Ive seen dam small linux, and someothers but i cant seem to find one that would be perfect to install on the hard drive and at least let it become usefull for more than word 2.0 and printing labels and such. Preferably it would be easy to install because i have little experience with the linux command line stuff.
if i remember correctly, i think you can upgrade the HDD to 850Mb, do you have any PCI (white) slots or are they all ISA (black)
I doubt Puppy Linux would work because the computer only has 10MB of RAM! I think your only option would be Damn Small Linux. Failing that you could do away with a GUI and run a command line instead That's not as bad as it sounds on Linux you know! Most programs have a command line interface like Xine (for mp3s), Lynx (for internet browsing) and Nano (for text editing)! You could upgrade the RAM to at least 64MB. You'd stand a much better chance of running a Linux distro then. I'd expect a computer of that age to take EDO RAM which you can buy on eBay for as little as £1!
yeah i havent ever cracked the case because its at my parents business and i didnt want to be blamed for tha computer not working (again) hehe how about compiling my own linux though. I would have to become more comfortable with the linux command line(i have edited the grub bootloader from the terminal before and am comfortable with dos so its not completely foreign) but i have heard of linux where you can compile it and only add exactly what you need and can have an extremely small footprint like less than 10 megs. just curious though i dont know if its even worth all the trouble thanks in advance
Sorry, but it's not worth the trouble. Your average cheap-o consumer-grade DSL router has more than 10mb of ram, and a faster CPU as well. That system should be sent to the dumpster I'm afraid. You can get a pretty decent system used for around $50, or new for about $200. I'm sure that would be a much better solution than trying to limp through life with a 486-SX... to give you an idea, even my Linux-powered firewall is a 300MHz K6-2 with 192mb RAM... :O
You could try LFS, (Linux From Scratch). Last time I checked there was a live cd that can be installed from. Of course, it's command line interface most of the way and you have to compile everything. (Which will take ages on a 486sx/10Mb ram.) But all the nesseccary files are on the cd-rom(not dvd) which saves heaps of downloading, searching and HD space. It's a great way to learn about linux. (although, personally I have not completed an install yet, too busy at uni.) A proxy server comes to mind for usage, it would save you bandwidth, but may be slower than the rest of the network. The above advice is aknowledged, however it may still be a usefull learning tool. (the case might make a good letter box, lol.)
i have a computer i dont need this one. I tend to be fascinated with what you can do with some old computers. but i didnt know routers had more memory than that old thing hehe thats pretty funny...
