iB::Topic::8meg ram on old laptop?

	Damn Small Linux :: Damn Small Linux Board The DSL Forums

» Welcome Guest
[ Log In :: Register ]

Damn Small Linux Board » Damn Small Linux » Laptops » 8meg ram on old laptop?

		Mini-ITX Boards Sale, Fanless BareBones Mini-ITX, Bootable 1G DSL USBs, 533MHz Fanless PC <-- SALE $200 each!
		Get The Official Damn Small Linux Book. DSL Market , Great VPS hosting provided by Tektonic

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Topic: 8meg ram on old laptop?, can this be done?

< Next Oldest | Next Newest >

gcsnb

Group: Members
Posts: 3
Joined: May 2004

Posted: July 15 2005,16:46

I have an old 486 laptop with only a floppy and net card,
i have run the net install and it works as far as downloading the iso and creating the bootfloppy.
the laptop reboots, and it appears as though there is not enough memory to extract the knoppix image into memory.
Is is possible to specify a swap space during the install and run this on 8 meg of ram?
please say yes
Regards
Gordon

cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: July 15 2005,22:10

It might be possible to choke the initial ramdisk or adjust DSL so that it mounts a hard drive partition instead of a ramdisk upon bootup.

Unfortunately, you probably need to perform the hd install before you can tweak with it (assumes that you know what you are doing).

so unless you can temporarily move your hard disk over to another computer or temporarily install additional RAM, it may not be possible to get it to work with 8MB of RAM.

Realistically, you would not be able to use graphical mode with only 8MB of RAM.

A better choice might be "Basic Linux" or "Deli Linux" instead of DSL.

SaidinUnleashed Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 1428
Joined: Mar. 2004

Posted: July 16 2005,00:47

I have made a custom build of Basic Linux 3, adding several scripts to make things easier, making the menus more intuitive, and adding an irc client.

It is available HERE and the md5sum is md5 here.

-J.P.

P.S. BL3 can run X with as little as 6mb of ram, but 8 is recommended. It works very well on my 486 lappy, which has the same specs as yours. Even the pcmcia slots work (in the menu Control Panel >> enable pcmcia) to use with an old modem I have.

--------------
They say if you play a Microsoft CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing, cause if you play it forwards, it installs Windows.

Unleash the power of the TILDE~~~