Laptops :: Questions about DSL and a REALLY Old Laptop

Hello,

I am getting my hands on a really, REALLY old Laptop. I am talking like 12Mb of RAM, 500Mb Hardrive, that old. I, being a Linux fan, want to install a Linux OS that will work fairly fast on it. I have Ubuntu on my desktop, but that is just too big for this Laptop, so I was pointed to DSL.

Now, I am currently - scratch that, I just downloaded the "dsl-1.5.iso". Since this Laptop doesn't have a USB port, I can't throw it on my little USB Memory Stick. Should I burn the ISO to a CD, and proceed to install it from there?

And how user-friendly is DSL? Is there a Howto that I should read first somewhere, or is it fairly straight-forward?

Thanks in advance!
Goober.

I would just burn the iso to a cd. I am not sure if or how well X will run with 12mb ram. I believe the min for X is 16mb, but its worth a shot. It should at least run in CLI. As far as how user friendly it is, I think it is fairly easy to use, especially since you already have linux experience. For more info, check out the wiki.
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

I'm interested in your project, as I'm about to try the same thing myself, except that I don't have access to a CD-ROM for the laptop I'll be using, although I'm now the proud owner of a parallel zip drive ;)

You might find the following links helpful:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Installing_to_the_Hard_Disk
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/dsl-hd-install.html

I've used DSL a couple of times before, and it booted from CD no trouble at all, but I don't know (yet) about running it on atticware.

Er, what do you mean by "X"?

If DSL1.5 doesn't run, then I shall just try something else . . . perhaps an older version of DSL?

Thanks for the Links, Sarah. When I start trying to install DSL, they might come in handy.

Just out of curiosity, what is the machine you are trying to install on (make and model etc?)

There used to be a story on the dsl site about a couple of guys who booted DSL onto a 486 machine, so I reckon if it can be done on that... (hence I'm trying it with the laptop I've got)

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