[Cialug] [cialug]small linux

[Kenneth Ristau]

Dan Hockey wrote:
> does anyone know of a linux distro that will run on a old computer? its 
> a p75 40mb ram and 6gb hdd. i've tried debian 3r2 but keep messing up 
> things when installing X.
> -dh

I suppose that depends a lot on what you want to use it for.  If you are 
just setting up a workstation with no network or on a well-firewalled 
network, then a older distro might work fine for you.  I have some old 
CD's I could dig up with RH 6.x and early RH 7.x if you want them.

If, however, you are wanting a modern kernel or the system will have to 
fend for itself on a hostile network, then there isn't much out there 
I'm afraid.  The older distros are so out of date that they would likely 
be compromised in short order, even if you applied all the patches you 
could find.

I have Knoppix 3.2 running on a P133 laptop with 140 Mb of RAM and it is 
dog, dog slow.  My wife uses it to look up recipes from our ReciPants 
database, so it suits its purpose well because once she looks the recipe 
up, it stays on the screen for a long time.  It is almost impossible to 
read Slashdot or Google News unless you have the patience of a 150 year 
old Tibetan monk.

If you want those old disks, let me know and I'll bring them to the next 
meeting.

later,
kristau