OS for OLD thinkpad

[imported_Stin]

IBM ThinkPad 760ELD 166mhz / 16mb ram / 750mb harddisk

Alright folks, ive got this laptop that I would like to setup for 6th grade student. It needs surfing (wireless) and word processing abilities. What OS do you guys feel would be best for this computer? Right now im feeling W98SE, but Its been a while since ive touched a computer this slow. Are there any linux distros that will run on this laptop with a UI usable by a moderatly skilled 6th grade windows user. Any input is greatly appreciated.

 

[TwiceOver]

I had nearly the same laptop once. If you can bump up the ram any try Win2K. It loved the IBM laptop I had at the time, and after tweaking the startup a bit, it ran great.

 

[h2]

Not enough ram to run most stuff, damn small linux might work. Windows 95 will work very well. Windows 98 version 1, the one with IE 4, will run. Not much else will though. If you could get more ram on it you could run beatrix fairly well. But more ram would cost more than a used laptop is my guess.

 

[imported_Stin]

yeah im kinda looking forward to tweaking this and really seeing the results. Im looking into some cheap ram, if anyone has some spare stuff laying around pm me. I believe its pc66 EDO SODIMMs. I really dont see how 16mb is gonna get anything done..

 

[imported_Stin]

the laptop is free, and people want me to get it going over piecing together a desktop from scrounged parts but yeah the 16mb is really a weakness here.. im not too familiar with those distros you mentioned, but im guessing they dont run KDE or GNOME? Those other GUIs just arent that GUI.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Nothing worthwhile will happen in 16MB of ram. You're begging the beggar here.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I had a Thinkpad 701C (486 75Mhz, 8MB built-in, with an additional 16MB SO-SIMM, IIRC). Win98se was about the most that I dared run on that thing, or perhaps a text-mode Linux distro if you happen to prefer that. But I don't think that any GUI-mode Linux distro will run efficiently on only 16MB of RAM, X alone eats up that much these days, I think. I wouldn't even bother with W2K either, no matter how you strip it down, it will be paging constantly, and paging to a notebook drive is slow. :| Best of luck. (Hey, there's always Win3.1! You can even get a TCP/IP stack and a web browser, although I'm not so certain about wireless networking drivers.)

 

[h2]

I have a 100 megahertz laptop with 8 mB of ram, windows 95 with Office 97 runs fine on it, office is a little slow. Windows 95 was spec'ed to run on 4 mB of ram. You can run a simple browser like Opera 5, maybe 6 too, those will I think run sort of. IE 4 would also run ok, but definitely not IE 5.

But finding that kind of ram is a pain, I looked, it cost as much as just getting a used laptop with more ram, almost.

No way on kde / gnome though.

damn small linux is your only hope for linux, that might run, but not very well. I tend to avoid these kinds of projects nowadays, it's just not worth the time, you might as well just go online to craigslist or something, pick up a 2-300 megahertz pc with everything, including 128 mB ram, for about $50, why bother trying to get something as restricted as the laptop to work, just a waste of time.

 

[halfadder]

NewDeal used to be a great option, but it hasn't been updated in a long time. Basiclly a web browser and a bunch of office apps, designed to look and work like modern apps, but also to run well on a 486! Anything with a Pentium was more than enough for a great experience.

It was such a cool idea, but cheap PCs pretty much killed any recent development efforts. Still worth looking into, though. Maybe they can give you a free copy for the student.

The "recent" versions are here:
http://www.breadbox.com/

 

[MadRat]

I'm dying to try CALDIRA II on Windows 3.11, just got to find a copy of 3.11 WFW.

My pet is a Gateway Solo with 24MB of EDO RAM, P133, external 256K L2 cache, and 1.4GB storage. For some reason it won't launch Slackware. I'm thinking of going Vectorlinux next, using IceWM as the GUI since its touted as the way to go for stuff all the way down to 386 processors. I'm curious what you run into for yours. Keep updating us the moment you get your project underway!

btw - NT 3.5x and NT 4.0 w/SP6a works wonderful on just 16MB. So many people forget that fact. Its the OS I tanked to try to run Linux distros.

 

[imported_Stin]

IceWM looks pretty cool cant lie. Well im getting my hands on this computer tomorrow, ill try out 98se see how it runs and then experiment a bit.

 

[DannyBoy]

Kind of sick to think the processor in my Router is a 200mhz something running a custom linux distro :/

 

[RelaxTheMind]

Self contained linux distro that fits on a single floppy disk... well... only to share an internet connection.

http://www.coyotelinux.com

System Requirements:

* 486DX/25 or better processor
* 12Mb RAM
* 1.44Mb floppy drive

but there are other tiny distros that make the best out of aged puters...

 

[MadRat]

I am loading Mandrake 9.2 on this Gateway tonight. The 5GB drive I found worked flawlessly in her! Thats alot more headroom to work with. And get this, these gateways use a funky memory card that plugs into a propriety connector - one of the two were loose and I suddenly found it really has 40MB!! Talk about opening up all sorts of possibilities.

I still aim to get Win3.11 WFW and drop Calmira II on it. That just looks too cool to pass up a try at 56K colors and fairly well functional Win XP-like theme that some guy wrote for it. Hell, I might have to one up him and make a RedHat-alike theme for it. (j/k)

 

[Tectron]

Damn Small would run beautiful on there, mayby trade firefox for opera since its faster. I have it running on two old omnibook 3000ctx 233 laptops and it runs great. One has 16 megs and the other has 144megs. There is a noticable differance with more ram but its not drastic.

 

[Link19]

What about trying to run OS/2 WARP 3 on that ThinkPad. That was a great OS back in the day.

 

[imported_Stin]

MAD PROPS TO MADRAT
A little package arrived in the mail today, some memory from a one Madrat!

If anyone still cares, ive got it running win98se with ie 5.5 with the 16mb of mem. A lot of thrashing, im about to put in this other mem and we will see what we get. I installed k-meleon as well but its slower than 5.5, atleast with this little memory.

 

[Rottie]

try to add more memory. I had Dell Latitude XP4200 486DX100 notebook with 24MB running ok with Win98se.

 

[jdiddy]

I had a similar laptop as my first laptop it was a 760ED with a pentium 133 4 gig hdd originally had 16mbs of ram I upgraded it to 80 mbs. That thing ran like a champ. I recently gave it to a relative. I put a new load of Win98se on it. It still works great. Can't get wireless working. The pcmcia slot only supports 16bit cards, and finding a 16bit card was a PITA. I just put some EDO So-Dimms from ebay in it and it made a world of difference. I found 64mbs for $20 shipped not a bad deal. That laptop sold me on Thinkpads for life. Now I'm blessed with a x31. But add some ram its cheap and it really does help.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Originally posted by: Link19
What about trying to run OS/2 WARP 3 on that ThinkPad. That was a great OS back in the day.

No, No, No, No....OS/2 was a pile then, And it is still a pile today.. And this IS from firsthand experience.

 

[thunderroller]

you should go for win95 of winNt4

 

[Rottie]

one more thing my DSL service works with my old Dell notebook too.