Ok, because you've got *really* low ram, it's probably better to run the installation script from the command line without booting into X. I'm doubtful that it would even work from the X desktop. The install script basically just opens up a terminal window I think anyway, so I doubt you're losing much there.
I run (part-time) from a frugal install onto a laptop with 16M RAM P75 processor and about 250-300 meg usable hard drive space. I use Links a lot for web browsing, and Dillo for the rest. It runs ok for the stuff I want, but be aware that your machine is not going to run all the applications available in DSL. However, it will run a hell of a lot better if you create swap space. I kind of felt my way around and followed instructions from the Wiki and made instructions up for myself. I'll hopefully have time to write detailed instructions tomorrow afternoon (my time) so about 24 hours after this post is up I guess.
You could also try booting into X with:
Code Sample
dsl minimal vga=normal mem=16M desktop=jwm
(I hope I've not left anything out of that..) and see how you go with that.
And you're right, that Wiki page about the installation from floppies needs some work, but there are others that will help you, search for install (I think there's a category link off the Wiki Main Page)
Just so you don't think I'm a complete cow, I would write up a quick how-to tonight, but I'm really tired and very very likely to make mistakes or leave out something important. Since I'm not yet technically proficient enough to write something like that in my sleep, I reckon you're probably better off waiting to see if someone beats me to it, or until I can think clearly enough to do it properly.
And... now that I've read your last post again: if you run the install script from the command line it will make no difference to the install itself - you'll still get your gui and so on. The problem is that if you install from the install script (which is designed to be run from a CD) you're going to format your HD in the process and thus interfere with your current installation. I won't even guess what happens there, because I've no idea.
So... the short version is to try the network installation method listed below instead:
(You're going to get rid of the current installation of whatever is on your HD at the moment so back up anything important first!)
And like I said above, follow my advice with caution and tempered with your own common sense since I'm pretty tired! Good luck Cheers and beers, SarahAlright, so I was able to do a frugal install (although after a few pains it finally worked) It loaded MUCH faster than the 2+ hours it did before in minimal mode, and that was full blown mode! However the speed at which it actually operated at was bearable, but still a little iffy. I had Win95 on it and it ran like a dream, I was thinking somewhere close to that with this linux install. So, now that my booting problem was solved and I knew it COULD be done, I decided to try a hard disk install, however due to the fact I still had the frugal it wouldn't boot from the hard drive, but from the image instead and in the process of trying to format that partition into a swap I ended up wasting everything and starting at square one again. Anyway, I'm a patient dude so no big.
For those who are wondering how to even get the frugal done... I booted with a Win98 boot disk (no ramdisk version) and made two partitions with fdisk, a huge one that took everything but 50 megs, and then the 50 meg one. I copied the rar files to the bigger one, unrared them to the 50 meg, and booted with the DSL boot disk into command only (dsl 2) and then ran cfdisk to destroy and remake three partitions where the bigger partition had been (leaving the 50 meg with the CD files untouched) according to this PDF I found: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub....wto.pdf I then followed the instructions except I would boot from floppy and run boot: install and choose Frugal install LILO to CF. The hda's were numbered differently so I'd take that into account, and finally when asked if there's any boot options type ALL that you want, since you booted from floppy it doesn't remember the ones you already put in. After that it should go fine then.Wow, I never really thought to find people with the same crazy plan as I have: to internet and run a text editor on a prehistoric laptop I got for free :P
Mine is a HP Omnibook, 100mhz, 1Gb hd and 16 megs of RAM ;) so cute. But, now I've come to the real work.
The lappie currently has an old Windows 98 install which is totally useless for me, contains no data, I don't really care formatting; except for one thing. With Windows still working, I can access the infrared-port, the only 'way out' since my laptop has no usb and doesn't recognize my new-bought pcmcia card while running Windows.
Sweeping away Windows would leave me with my only input device: the floppy drive, and I'm a little reluctant to do that. But according to the Wiki explanation, I háve to make 2 partitions and sweep all the old stuff off.
I downloaded the 'dsl-2.0.iso' from the downloads page... there were more iso's! but this seemed to be the most simple one. Tomorrow I'll give it a shot. Don't know if anyone cares, but I'll keep you posted!
- HeidiYou do not need to blow away any existing partitions in order to try DSL.
You can try a poorman's install to your existing C:\ drive (you need approximately 50MB free space on this drive) without hurting anything else. You also can make a DOS swap file on your C:\ drive after you get DSL up and running. The swapfile is good if you are low on RAM, which is true in your case. I would create a 32MB or 48MB swap file if possible.That would be great!
I'll try it rightaway, I downloaded the file and do have 50 megs free... I copied the full Win98 CD to the harddrive via infrared ...and then again because it seemed some .cab files were corrupt... well, says enough. It was hell, and if I throw that off, I should have about 200 mb free.
...and then again because it seemed some .cab files were corrupt... well, says enough. It was hell, and if I throw that off, I should have about 200 mb free. 