Laptops :: Some help with an old 486

Hi,

I've got an old 486s(u)x with 12mb RAM. It's HD has 500mb, and I want to install linux on it. Will I be able to run DSL decently?

And is DSL configured to use parallel port stuff? I really need to use my Zip Drive and printer on it.

Also, I've not discarded installing other flavours of linux on it, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

ZipSlack would be perfect for your machine. See my HOWTO:Zipslack Minimal Install

I don't know if DSL would work in your case, but I have an old ibm 370c with 340M drive & 12M ram (486 dx). The two linux flavours I have found to run well on it are Vector Linux 1.8 and Tiny linux, both are slackware based (2.2 kernel) Tiny is good you install the base with 12 floppies then network on 3 floppies. After this you need a pcmcia NIC card to ftp the rest (Xfree86 and apps). It is a bit of a procedure, but not very technical, just time consuming and at the end of the day the system you get is one rock solid slack install you will get to love, small, simple and functional and you know you,ve built it.
To install vector without a CD rom is also a bit of a chore, this invoves getting the vl.bz2 install file onto the hard drive by whatever means, I have used pkzip spanning 44 floppies onto a dos partition and also laplink onto a dos partition. Setup linux partitions, then boot from floppy, it will find its file on the dos partition and load vector, another Slack derivative. This one comes setup with apps and all and has tools to setup X, network, PPP etc. Vector is also highly thought of by its users. I would give DSL a try because of its small footprint and superb low resource apps. The problem you will have is trying to run X with only 12M RAM and apps on top of that. est to experiment. This is the thing about linux, so much choice - which way to turn?

My best regards
Jock

original here.