APwrs
11-20-2005, 04:26 AM
Greetings. I have an old laptop that's a P75 with either 32 or 64 megs of ram, I think around a 600 meg hard drive, and only a floppy drive. Is there any useful Linux distro I could install on this thing?
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eskaypey
11-20-2005, 06:45 AM
Not sure what you mean by 'useful' but give slackware or debian a try.
leonpmu
11-20-2005, 07:03 AM
Peanut or Vector...
Davy
11-20-2005, 11:55 AM
i've used dsl (damn small linux) on my old laptop. it was nice cuz it was a fully functional desktop with office software, firefox, ndiswrapper already installed, and flash readily installable.
the best part is that it's only a 50 megabyte download. :D
the best part is that it's only a 50 megabyte download. :D
Rinias
11-20-2005, 12:06 PM
This is all good advice... If you choose to go the Slackware way, forget about recent Slack's, what you want is ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-7.0/
Might be hard to install, I didnt look around for iso's or anything. But its what you would want.
Rinias
Might be hard to install, I didnt look around for iso's or anything. But its what you would want.
Rinias
blimpieboy
11-20-2005, 12:47 PM
I have an old NEC laptop that has a p150, 32 megs of ram, and a 1 gig drive. After some unsuccessful attempts at installing some other distros, I installed DamnSmall Linux on it, and had a fully functional GUI with some very useful packages, and it is easy to add more through myDSL and since it's debian based, you can also get apt working on it.
APwrs
11-20-2005, 05:15 PM
This is all very good information, thank you. And please keep in mind, the laptop only has a floppy drive, so I wouldn't be able to do anything on it that required a CD drive.
Rinias
11-20-2005, 05:40 PM
I believe that Slackware 7 is installed using floppies... And maybe ONLY floppies... ;-)
Davy
11-21-2005, 10:54 PM
you can download an install floppy disk and use that to connect to the internet to download the rest of damn small linux.
oh, and btw, deli linux is another option. i've never tried it, though. http://delilinux.berlios.de/
oh, and btw, deli linux is another option. i've never tried it, though. http://delilinux.berlios.de/
blimpieboy
11-24-2005, 10:47 AM
Whoops. sorry, I looked right past the "floppy only".
I'm not sure if Damn Small has an install from network option. Since DSL autoscans your hardware at boot, if you had a second laptop you could pull your drive, install on the other machine, and then put it back in. (or with an adaptor, you could do it on a desktop).
Slackware is great, but if you'd have some work to do once it's installed. If you're wanting an updated kernel with recent packages, DSL would be the way to go on such an older machine (esp. since it has a nice GUI that actually works on old pentiums).
I'm not sure if Damn Small has an install from network option. Since DSL autoscans your hardware at boot, if you had a second laptop you could pull your drive, install on the other machine, and then put it back in. (or with an adaptor, you could do it on a desktop).
Slackware is great, but if you'd have some work to do once it's installed. If you're wanting an updated kernel with recent packages, DSL would be the way to go on such an older machine (esp. since it has a nice GUI that actually works on old pentiums).
leonpmu
11-24-2005, 11:14 AM
if you had a second laptop you could pull your drive, install on the other machine, and then put it back in. (or with an adaptor, you could do it on a desktop).
.
Not really recommened because if your two laptops are completely differnet arch's, then it won't boot on your old laptop.
What I did for mine was that I had a rather large hdd, and simply copied the install files into a partition and then installed from the partition, or you could try and ftp install from another box in your network....
.
Not really recommened because if your two laptops are completely differnet arch's, then it won't boot on your old laptop.
What I did for mine was that I had a rather large hdd, and simply copied the install files into a partition and then installed from the partition, or you could try and ftp install from another box in your network....
blimpieboy
11-24-2005, 10:14 PM
Not really recommened because if your two laptops are completely differnet arch's, then it won't boot on your old laptop.
I agree that it is not recommended for most distros, but it actually will work with Damn Small Linux regardless of arch because of it's autoscan at boot. It "automagically" detects your hardware everytime, so if you move the hd from machine to machine to machine it will work.
I agree that it is not recommended for most distros, but it actually will work with Damn Small Linux regardless of arch because of it's autoscan at boot. It "automagically" detects your hardware everytime, so if you move the hd from machine to machine to machine it will work.
Pafnoutios
11-25-2005, 07:43 AM
oh, and btw, deli linux is another option. i've never tried it, though. http://delilinux.berlios.de/
I've been waiting for the DeLi Linux 0.7 release to try it on my old laptop with 12 or 16 MB RAM. It looks like it will be significantly better than 0.6.
I've been waiting for the DeLi Linux 0.7 release to try it on my old laptop with 12 or 16 MB RAM. It looks like it will be significantly better than 0.6.
DanceMan
11-25-2005, 10:53 PM
The method that works best in Win is to copy the install files to the drive in a desktop using a 2.5 " to 3.5" hdd adapter. Then boot from a floppy and install from the hdd as suggested by leonpmu.
I've also used an old 100Mb external Zip drive connected by the parallel port, booting from floppy and using the Zip Guest dos version, also for Win. Those drives have reached the $5 to $10 level at yard sales, about the same cost as the hdd adapter. :D
I've also used an old 100Mb external Zip drive connected by the parallel port, booting from floppy and using the Zip Guest dos version, also for Win. Those drives have reached the $5 to $10 level at yard sales, about the same cost as the hdd adapter. :D
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