Mininum space install

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Mininum space install
started by: playstation201

Posted by playstation201 on June 23 2004,04:45

My brother has a old 486 he wasnt to play with linux on, it is pretty old and if he installed DSL and it takes 250-300 Mb of space, he wont have much to play with, would it be possible to install DSL and have it only use about 150 MB of space? This is only to introdude him to using linux regularly before he puts it on his main pc.

Posted by cbagger01 on June 23 2004,05:40

Use the "Search" button at the top of this page to search for keywords like:

frugal install

or

poormans install

This method should take up about 50MB of disk space.

Posted by davide on June 23 2004,14:40

hi,
this is very interesting
how does the 486 behave? is DSL working properly ?
I'm interested because i tried several times to use dsl on a 486 but it had too few ram so I had to quit.
How much ram has your brother's one?

Posted by skaos on June 23 2004,15:17

A normal DSL install takes around 130 MB, and you probably should use around 32 MB for swap. You need at least 16 MB memory, and even if DSL is lightweight, a 486 will be slow, so your brother may be dissapointed.

Posted by AwPhuch on June 23 2004,17:05

poormans install (copying the KNOPPIX) dir and then having the system uncompress the files on the fly on a 486 (unless you got like 64 meg of ram) is going to be unGodly slow!!

I have a 133mhz laptop 32Meg RAM with a 64Meg /swapfile (yes i created a swapfile, not a swap partition!) the poor thing slowly grinds damn near to a halt....RAM is the key with any OS, and Linux is no exception...

Anyone wanna sell me a compaq lte 5300 ac power adapter?!?

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by d4cnobby on June 25 2004,11:51

Hi Guys,
I haven't tried DSL on a `486 (yet) but I know that I will be definitely be doing a "hard disk drive install". I just would not be even thinking about a "run from CD" scenario, even if I did scrape up 32 (or even 64 meg) of RAM for the box.

Reason: - what Brian (AwPhuch) said is correct regarding "Operating Systems" performing better with more RAM at thier disposal. If you are able to reduce what is being loaded into memory [in this case file system components] there just has to be more RAM available for "programs,buffering and cacheing, etc.." without resorting to slower swap file/partition usage

I am running DSL on two other boxes, both faster and much more RAM. Both boot from the relatively small partition size DSL needs on their respective hard disk drives. Therefore I think that doing a repartition / partiton resize on the target box is desirable if you are going to be using DSL more than once or twice.

If you need something stable to achieve this go here: - <http://www.sysresccd.org/index.en.php>

BTW: - this is a *must have* for your "software toolbox" anyhow !

Posted by Ian "Bill" Morris on June 25 2004,14:26

AwPhuch,

I have a compaq LTE 5250 and am using it quite sucsessfully with a "Universal Power Adaptor" I got from a local electronics shop. It is a skytonic IC1200. You may have look trying one of those. I wouldn't like to carry it around though it is quite large.

Cheers

Bill

Posted by AwPhuch on June 25 2004,19:40

Quote (Ian "Bill" Morris @ June 25 2004,10:26)

Most excellent man thanks...the 5300 I have has the stupid docking station with it and Linux doesnt support the docking station....it gets its power just fine thru it but the ethernet card wont detect so I have to have a pcmcia ethernet and modem....

I dont think that powersupply is any bigger than a docking station hehe....

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by gm6jag on June 30 2004,20:26

HI Ganague,

I looked at this topic as I think I might want to try a HDD install. I've got a "spare" 1.7Gb drive here in the machine with mainly DOS ham Radio programs occupying about 0.4Gb of space. Windoze is on the main © drive and various Win and DOS shortcuts (from a DOS desktop) bring in the ham radio stuff as I need it.

What's the thoughts on making a partition on the "spare" (d) drive and putting dsl there?

[Your thoughts may be used agaianst you at a future date GRIN! ]

Regards

Mel

Posted by Steve Petson on July 07 2004,21:39

I'm running DSL on an old HP vectra 233 Mhz 32Mb RAM machine, and it's fast as lightning!!!!!!!