Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

On Wed, 27 Jun 2007, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Someone asked for our help installing some operating system to a laptop
> computer with an empty hard drive (no OS) and no floppy drive. 
-snip-
> We could partition his 2 GB and give BL 200MB to play in and put DSL on
> the rest for a while, since he has broadband to download it and lots of
> RAM.
>
> Any ideas?


Wikipedia lists
'3 Small or lightweight distributions for use with older hardware' at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions.

Basiclinux is second on the (alphabetical) list.  'Comes on 2 floppies'. 
Will work on a 386 with 4MB.  'One of the few "small" Linux distributions 
capable of running a graphical desktop.' 'citation needed'.  Steven, could 
you improve this description with mention of the loop version, to attract 
people without floppy drives? (And QEMU version?)

Small Slackware based include Vector Linux, which wants 200MHz, 96MB, 
2.1GB, Austrumi live CD from Latvia which needs 96MB RAM (so it can run in 
RAM, like DSL) and a bootable CD-ROM drive, and Puppy, which might work on 
this laptop (needs 32MB RAM) but I think needs to be installed from live 
CD with some complicated installation procedure (since it is really meant 
to run from CD).

PLD Polish linux distribution with RPMs needs 16MB RAM and 50MB disk space 
plus 32MB swap to install RPMs.  Available in readable English.  Looks 
daunting for a beginner, unlike BL. E. Europeans still use older hardware. 
My partner just found a free 733MHz desktop marked 'works', that needs a 
new case.

Delilinux 0.7 should work on a 386 with 8MB RAM.  Now uClibc-based with 
Korn shell. Fun to play with in a small logical partition but not very 
easily expanded.  Konqueror browser, Abiword, mutt, sylpheed, icewm, e3. 
Interesting to see what would compile for uClibc.  2.4.33.3 kernel.

Very few recent linuxes still support 166MHz laptops even with 72MB RAM. I 
recommended Basiclinux (possibly with user account and password) for this 
laptop, or possibly DSL on hard disk to support a cardbus wireless card if 
he has one already.  BL3 could run nicely in 200MB (even including 25MB of 
DOS and loop BL3 for rescue purposes since no floppy drive) and leave 
1.8GB for something else.


> Sindi
>
>
> > From the laptop owner:
>
> My objective is to get this thing to run a web browser and Remote Desktop
> client and work with a PCMCIA wireless card (I'll have to dig; I'm not sure
> I have one of those), so either Linux or Windows 2000 will work AFAIK.
>
> IIRC it has a 2 GB HD and 72 MB RAM. Plently for Windows 2000 and probably
> some thin Linux distros.
> -----------------------