[Cialug] what distros were out in 1996?

[Kenneth Ristau]

Nathan C. Smith wrote:
> There are several distros that will run on an older pentium or 486.  The
> biggest issue is getting the installation started.  You may need to check
> the BIOS to make sure the machine can boot from CD-ROM.  Some older machines
> couldn't boot from CD-ROM.

Indeed, I still boot that old laptop of mine off a floppy.

I was unable to find a suitable-sized laptop hard drive to install, so I 
had to figure out a way to use the existing, annoyingly-just-under-2-gig 
hard drive.  I ended up copying the ISO to the hard drive and creating a 
boot floppy.  That way, I could unhook the external CD-ROM drive and 
have a nice, compact system for the kitchen counter.

Someday, I'll either get a slightly larger HD and do a full install, or 
I'll at least take the time to figure out how to transfer the 
boot-to-image config over to the HD and get rid of the boot floppy.

BTW: The battery life on that old thing is phenomenal.  I can VNC into 
my laptop upstairs for about 4 or 5 hours!  That's probably a 
side-effect of loading the CD image off the HD instead of running it off 
the HD.

later,
kristau