Which OS for a p166 mmx?

[Noriaki]

Since Linux isn't an option, I'd personally use Win95B..but 98SE might work alright...

 

[jkdude]

i have a P-166 w/ 32mb of RAM at home and i do this with it:

Dual boot w/ Win95 B and RedHat 7.0

the two work like a charm. Win95 is very fast, and RedHat even faster.

Also, i have installed Win95 on 100 computers at work, with a lot of them being p-166's, and have found that Windows95 is the best Win9x OS for that type of machine.

just my $0.02

also, if you want to dual boot, split your hard-drive up into a 2gb/1.2gb partition.

2 gb for Win95
1.2 gb for Red Hat

good luck!

 

[Motero]

I have a 166 with 32 mb of ram and Win 95b works actually quite well. It boots relatively quickly and I've had no problems with it for quite a few years!

 

[Plantanthera]

Win95 OSR2 don't have the bloated & unstable of Active Desktop from Win89/IE4.x

If you decided to go with Win95, then I suggest IE5.x to avoid Active Desktop.

My current P200 Client run very well with 32megs of RAMs after I down-graded it back to Win95b from Win98se, because Win98 Active Desktop was too unstable and is much slower than Win95b.

Newer doesn't mean that it is better. (I would rather run the 5 year old Netware 3.12 over Winblows 2000.)

 

[Changlinn]

I'd suggest beos if you don't want games but want more stability than any other os. for games and hardware go win 98 or 98se. But I think they need to be stable 32megs of ram, I had a p1 with 32 and it wouldn't even run 98se, but would run beos and win ME, go figure, and win me works ok on it, I needed soemthing that would like my usb orb drive, 95 is no good for usb so tried 98 no good, win me worked.
Trial and error.

 

[Lowfat]

Thanks a lot for your opinion guys! You've been great! Here's what I'll do. First, I'm going to try win98se, allthough I agree with what you've suggested, it'll be too slow or won't work at all. Then, if that crashes, I'll try win95 osr2, and finally BeOS or linux as a final way to get it up and running. I can't get my hands on NT 4.0. Now, fingers crossed, I'll install a minimalistic win98se with IE 5.0..

I'll let you know how it turned out, but I won't install until this weekend, I suspect.

 

[Workin']

<< First, I'm going to try win98se, allthough I agree with what you've suggested, it'll be too slow or won't work at all. >>

These people saying Win98 won't work are dorks. The friggin' minimum requirements are like a 486/66 w/8MB RAM! A P166 with more than 16MB of RAM will run 98 perfectly fine - if it doesn't, then something is very very wrong with your system.

Good luck!