OS recommendation?

[dchakrab]

My nonprofit just got an older laptop as a donation. It's a 486 Toshiba, no hard drive. It has an external CD rom drive (no idea if it can boot from it) and a floppy drive (presumably it can boot from this). Maybe 8 mb ram installed. Model number is T4700CS.

I'd like a floppy-based version of Linux to try out with it. Bare minimum, i'd like a GUI and a browser...is this possible? Would a version like that support a notebook wireless / wired ethernet card? Something supporting wireless would be idea, of course.

If this is out of the question, a CD-based version could work instead, if I can get it to boot from the external CD rom drive, but most live CD versions of Linux seem designed for much faster systems, with much more memory, so I think a floppy-based version would be idea.

All suggestions appreciated, and thanks.

-Dave.

 

[dchakrab]

Update...the laptop hard drive bay is empty, but there appears to some kind of internal hard drive that's 500 mb or so...currently running Window 95 (it booted).

It has 24 mb RAM.

This, i assume, adds many more possibilities for a linux distro...

Anyone?

 

[drag]

What do you want to use the Laptop for?

It seems that Win95 will give it the most possiblity for desktop stuff.

Personally I would install Linux on it if it had 24megs of ram, but I would only use command line with it. If you want Linux + X windows you can check out Vector Linux, but it's going to be slow slow slow.

 

[Schadenfroh]

what kind of 486?

 

[dchakrab]

No clue what kind of 486...

If Windows 95 is stable on it, and not too slow, how come there isn't a linux distro that would be as stable on it? Seems like there should be, right?

The other problem with Windows 95 is that this machine is ancient, and so is in desperate need of a reformat / reinstall, and I don't have reinstallation media for Window 95...no idea where i would even get them.

-Dave.

 

[drag]

It would be slow. It would also be much more stable then Win95.

Stable and slow.

X windows incures a significant amount of overhead in it's operation. Now on a 486 with 24 megs it's going to be a lot. It's possible, I've done it. I've even run a full Gnome enviroment on a 486, but it's not something that would be great.

Linux in a command line enviroment will run great on a 486. Faster then Win95, definately. Full 32bit capabilities, real multiuser, real multitasking (unlike win95). It will be very usefull, and you can get graphical browser running in the framebuffer with the aid of the Links2 browser and gdm. You have midnight commander for a file manager if that's what you want.

If you realy want X windows, my best bet is to try out vector linux.

 

[Turkish]

Windows 95 would be your safest bet IMO.

 

[vegetation]

Don't expect to use it much for graphical web browsing; slower 486's have a hard time just decrypting a bunch of jpeg images on every web page you come across. Text based browsing would be ok but I can't see why anyone would put themselves through such torture in this day and age. Would make a fine machine for word processing, light duty publications, email station, or such.

 

[Sunner]

If you want Linux on it, you'll have to go with some really old distro to get acceptable performance.
It's not like you're going to be able to do much useful stuff with it anyway, so Win95 should work fine too.

On a sidenote, can't you just ask for donations from companies when they upgrade their computers? About a year ago my mom's work gave away ~100 old HP Kayaks, P-II's of varying speed grades.
Even the cheap ass company I work for occasionally gives stuff away.

 

[drag]

Once I installed a Linux OS on a old IBM thinkpad with a 486 with 4 megs of ram. It could of been a 386, I don't remember. If it was a 486 it would of had to have been a SX model because it had a optional math coprocessor upgrade.

I don't remember if it had 4 or 6 or maybe 8 megs, but I think it was 4 because some floppy based versions of linux wouldn't run on it. Once you get under 8 megs running linux becomes nearly impossible.

So I eventually had some bastardized versions of a floppy distro installed and I even installed some packages from a ancient slackware version. Anyways it realy realy sucked.

What I found out worked best for it was to install DOS on it, and then use kermit as a terminal emulator to connect to the serial port on my computer. In this form it was infinately usefull, I loved it like that. In order to use it as a serial terminal you need to have a null modem cable, also called a laplink (for connecting pre-built in ethernet laptops to win9x machines), but it's mostly used to connect external modems to your computer. Becarefull incorrect serial cables can screw up your motherboard, and there are several different types. Remember: null modem serial cable.

I could even launch X programs from it. My favorite was to start Quake3 via the serial terminal and I could read Quake3's comments (normally only viewed by hitting the ~ button).

I also have a ancient 486 DX based proliant server. It had a hotswappable SCSI bay with 4 1.13 gig scsi drives. Very fast drives, very good scsi controller. It was faster then even my more modern 8gig ATA drives. It made a great file server until I could afford a nicer computer harddrive.

It had 64 megs of RAM in it, and it was a 66mhz DX model. Top of the line 486. I found a old adapter with a pentium chip, forget the name of it, but it boosted the CPU speed from 66mhz to 86mhz (whoohoo!). Made a wonderfull file server, still could if I wanted to waste the electricity to run it.

I ran Redhat 7.0 on it. Gnome even ran on it just fine. Slow as all get out.

(Those Redhat versions from 7.0-7.3 are the worst distros ever made, btw, 7.3 was so-so. 7.3 should of been 7.0)

These things make great serial terminals for more modern systems. They work wonderfull for that. But I wouldn't expect much more then that. E-mail, text based browsing, telnet/ssh'ng to shell accounts, irc chat. That's about it.

A computer is a computer is a computer. 486 will still work fine, but it wouldn't be pleasent. Basicly you have a computer that gets spanked by a pocket-size computer (64megs, 200mhz strongarm cpu for a mid-range model) and even many graphical calculators!

You'd get better results with FreeDOS!!!!!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: drag
Once I installed a Linux OS on a old IBM thinkpad with a 486 with 4 megs of ram. It could of been a 386, I don't remember. If it was a 486 it would of had to have been a SX model because it had a optional math coprocessor upgrade.

These things make great serial terminals for more modern systems. They work wonderfull for that. But I wouldn't expect much more then that. E-mail, text based browsing, telnet/ssh'ng to shell accounts, irc chat. That's about it.

Totally agreed. I have an ancient Toshiba 486SX-25 with 8MB of RAM (4MB internal and a 4MB proprietary expansion card), it has a 6-bit greyscale screen. Even opening a program is slow as heck, under Win95, but it makes a half-decent remote-desktop terminal for a bigger machine. Before that, I had an IBM thinkpad with an (IBM) 486-75, color screen, that one could actually run some programs (but sadly not Mozilla). I used that one for over a year as a remote terminal using NetMeeting to control my W2K machine. It died though, was travelling, went over a bump, the hinge connecting the LCD screen broke and the screen fried. Good thing about cheap laptops though, they may be slow, but they're also nearly disposable if they die.