Subj: Which Linux distribution, please? Date: 13/07/01 To: alug@stu.uea.ac.uk
Hello again, Everyone. I e-mailed alug a short while ago asking for help with the mini-distribution, muLinux. I still have not got that sorted out, but I am now in a different situation. By an incredible fluke that I will not bore you all with I have got my 40X CDROM drive running. I would now like to ask the group which distribution of Linux I should, or could, install. I will recap the hardware that I have in case my previous note has been mislaid.
chip: i486DX 33MHz, upgraded to 133 MHz with Evergreen chip. hdd0: 210 Mb. with MSDOS 6.2 ( 4DOS addon) and Windows for Workgroups hdd1: 450 Mb. partitioned 240 Mb. for DOS and Windows, 210 Mb. for a
Linux OS. ( Do I need another partition for Swap?). fdd0: 1.44 Mb. 40X CDROM drive. 16 Mb. RAM Both muLinux and Hal91 Boot+Root floppies. Oh yes: a 70-year-old brain.
If there is not enough disk space for a recommended distribution, would it be possible for me to use only part of it at first, and which parts should a novice select? I would appreciate any advice that you could give me. Regards, Norman
On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 Ruleng@aol.com wrote:
hdd0: 210 Mb. with MSDOS 6.2 ( 4DOS addon) and Windows for Workgroups hdd1: 450 Mb. partitioned 240 Mb. for DOS and Windows, 210 Mb. for a
Can you afford some more hard-disk space for linux? It would really make a big difference!
40X CDROM drive.
Is this an IDE drive or does it use some kind of different hardware interface?
If there is not enough disk space for a recommended distribution, wouldit be possible for me to use only part of it at first, and which parts should a novice select? I would appreciate any advice that you could give me.
I just had a look at some of my old distributions, you could probably install an old (5.1) version of Redhat or maybe the slink release of Debian. With the hardware you have there are going to be some quite heavy limitations on what you can and can't do. The current release of Debian says you need 12Mb RAM and 64Mb harddisk but around 300Mb Harddisk for X-windows etc.
What do you want to do in Linux is probably the best question I can ask now, you are going to be limited by hardware but depending on what you want to do there may be ways around it.
Adam
On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 Ruleng@aol.com wrote:
If there is not enough disk space for a recommended distribution, wouldit be possible for me to use only part of it at first, and which parts should a novice select? I would appreciate any advice that you could give me.
Oh yeah, there is also this HOW-TO document for getting linux on a laptop with less than 4Mb of RAM and a hard disk of around 200Mb which you can find here http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/4mb-Laptops.html which may be useful. I just had a look at the Slackware website and it does say the minimum system is 16Mb of RAM and 50Mb of harddisk so that may be more suitable for you http://www.slackware.org
Adam
On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 05:41:13PM -0400, Ruleng@aol.com wrote:
If there is not enough disk space for a recommended distribution, would it be possible for me to use only part of it at first, and which parts should a novice select? I would appreciate any advice that you could give me. Regards, Norman
Different people in the user group have their own preferences of distribution so I hope that for each major distribution you will hear from someone in the group that uses it.
My favourite distribution is debian so I will answer you based on the capabilties of the debian installer and packaging system.
When debian first installs it installs what is called a base system - this is a small set of files which are just enough for the system to boot, to support the package installation system and a few other simple tasks. Even so there are many useful unix tools included.
SuSe tends to be a bit bulky maybe debian, which I would not normally advice to A) a begginer B) some one without free internet access. ( I know Suse will install in that size though the default kernal is now pentium optimised so not 486 compatable)
Owen
(SuSe user)
On 15-Jul-01 Ruleng@aol.com wrote:
Subj: Which Linux distribution, please? Date: 13/07/01 To: alug@stu.uea.ac.uk
Hello again, Everyone. I e-mailed alug a short while ago asking for help with the mini-distribution, muLinux. I still have not got that sorted out, but I am now in a different situation. By an incredible fluke that I will not bore you all with I have got my 40X CDROM drive running. I would now like to ask the group which distribution of Linux I should, or could, install. I will recap the hardware that I have in case my previous note has been mislaid.
chip: i486DX 33MHz, upgraded to 133 MHz with Evergreen chip. hdd0: 210 Mb. with MSDOS 6.2 ( 4DOS addon) and Windows for Workgroups hdd1: 450 Mb. partitioned 240 Mb. for DOS and Windows, 210 Mb. for a
Linux OS. ( Do I need another partition for Swap?). fdd0: 1.44 Mb. 40X CDROM drive. 16 Mb. RAM Both muLinux and Hal91 Boot+Root floppies. Oh yes: a 70-year-old brain.
If there is not enough disk space for a recommended distribution, wouldit be possible for me to use only part of it at first, and which parts should a novice select? I would appreciate any advice that you could give me. Regards, Norman
alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list Send list replies to alug@stu.uea.ac.uk http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug See the website for instructions on digest or unsub!
Date: 15-Jul-01 Time: 23:36:42
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Adam Bower -
oms101＠freeuk.com -
Ruleng＠aol.com -
Steve Fosdick