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Linux on 486 Machines?

J

jeans2nd

Member
I would like to use Linux on some (very) old boxes - 486 DX2's, 33 and 66 MHz, none Pentium class, using 550MB to 1.2 GB IDE drives. I need to establish a telnet session on them, to connect to an AS400 via ethernet. These PC's would be in the plant and only function as workstations. None of these PC's have a CDROM, only floppy and hard drives. Most have 8MB RAM, some 16. The Linux I have (Corel and WinLinux), are on CD, and require much more hard drive space than I have. So, can I use Linux on these machines? I know the first reaction is 'get newer machines', but that is not an option here - money and budget are just too tight. Many thanks in advance for any help! I must admit I also would like to prove that this really can be done! J2
 
Yes

I wouldn't want to run X on those, but those w/16MB would be capable.

Now the really tricky part. Getting a minimal install on them. You could use RedHat and choose minimal install. Or you could do Debian and do a REALLY minimal install. After you do that you'll need to install the other software that you need, but there's no reason that you couldn't easily fit it onto drives of that size. Even with X.

If all you need are terminals to run telnet sessions though you should be able to get away with somewhere around 100MB for an install. Easily meeing your requirements.
 
I have installed Red Hat 5.2 on an old IBM 486-50 SX machine with 20 megs ram, 250 mb hd and a 4x cd-rom drive. The basic install took 100 mb running in command line mode. Try digging up some old 4x cd rom drives and stick them in the boxes. RH 5.2 recognized the 1995 vintage cd rom in my old system no problem. I'm sure you can put RH 5.2 on a machine with as little as 8 mg of ram. Check out the Linux Documentation site for advice from the experts (I'm a newbie) at www.linuxdoc.org/. Best of luck.
 
I would run Debian on them w/o X. I do that on a couple boxes now. One is a live DNS server and has no speed problems as such and also as a firewall for a modem. I really wouldn't recommend anything less than 16MB of ram though.
 
Slackware might be a goof choice....they have a couble of bootdisk and rootdisks that can be used to install....

Still you would need a few 1.44 disks to do this, but its doable...

check the Slackware Site, and see the Install Help....

 
Go with Slackware. You can do a nice minimal install that is easy to tweak if need be. If all you need is a unix (or unix-like) system and it'll be for telnet, etc. then you might want to try the *best* minimal distribution:

OpenBSD

You don't even have to buy any CDs (although it is nice to do so to support the project). The FTP install is quick (if you have a decent connection). The install process is a bit intimidating compared to RedHat and even Slackware but it isn't all that hard...
 
You can pretty much run any linux distro you want. Except the newest versions of mandrake and redhat 7.0 wont run well on a 486 (actually..at all). You can also run X on the systems as well. But you will have to pick and choose the packages. People will disagree with me about the X thing but if you do your research well, it will run decent. I have it running on my experimental box which is a 486dx/66 w/16 megs of ram.


A great place to visit is www.linuxnewbie.org
 
What I have done in the past is copy the distribution CD onto a DOS partition on a hard drive. Temporarily mount the hard drive in the box you need the install in and install away.

486/66 upgraded to AMD 586-133 (about a P75) 🙂
 
i ran suse on a p75 basic config and it ran fine, the only problem was the damn 30 second wait to do anything :-(

then i loaded it on my c2 @ 900 and wow was it flying!!!





dam(i love you suse)
 
Hey Jeans,
I'm just getting in Linux myself. To answer you I think that Slackware would be about the best choice or Micro. You can run Slack 7 on even a 386sx, but to run any XWindows you need at least 16MB. In the next few days (Boy do I hate this Windows keyboard!) I'll be setting up Slack and if you're interested I can let you know how it went or goes. You can also go to www.linux.org for more info. MicroLinux may also be a good choice except I know very little about it and what it all has.
 
Dear Sir
I want to setup and connect all the 486 based mahcines with 16MB RAM and I want to use GNOME on Linux ver 6.2. Is it possible and can any of you tell me, how to configure.

1. I need only netscape browser
2. some email client

Sridhar
sridhar_mn@sify.com
 
I would second the option to use FreeBSD, I am running it on a 486-DX2/66 as my firewall and it works well. With the minimal install I still have ~150MB left on a 400MB HD. The ftp install is very easy to do. It recognized all my hardware and set it up properly.

For more help on installing and using FreeBSD from a new user to an experienced users point of view, go to Free BSD Diaryit is a good resource for a walk through of various aspects of FreeBSD.

FreeBSD was my first *nix install and in a few weeks I have started to learn a lot about it and other *nix derivatives.
 
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