Old Laptop, Would DamSmallLinux Work?
Forum: Laptops
Topic: Old Laptop, Would DamSmallLinux Work?
started by: Taino
Posted by Taino on May 28 2005,01:35
Hi everyone 
Ive been given an old laptop to use for school work etc.. it doesnt have an OS on it but it did have windows 95 before and it could run windows 98.
I was thinking maybe DamSmallLinux could go on it instead but like i said its "old" so im not sure if it could meet the minimal requirements for DamSmallLinux and run at a reasonable speed.
Here are the specs..
Its a Toshiba Satellite Pro 440CS model
has a P75mhz Cpu
24mb Ram
800mb Harddisk
And has a CD Rom drive.
What would be the best way to partition and setup this 800mb harddisk size wise?? for the OS, Swap, and maybe a Fat32 section for file access from a windoze machine??
Any help would be greatly appreciated.. thanks in advance!
P.S. could someone post a link to the ISO i should use to burn a bootable CD to install DamSmallLinux?? Ive looked at the download directories from the downloads page and its a bit confusing.. Im still not sure which 48mb to 50mb ISO file i should be downloading to do this.
Posted by shadowman on May 28 2005,03:46
I have a toshiba laptop w/ Pentium 130Mhz, 48MB ram, and 1.2Gig HD -- DSL runs great on that. I did a HD install on mine. I just did created a 96meg linux swap partition, and have everything else on the other.I've actually gotten a few other distros to run (albeit slowly) on this thing, but DSL has been the best so far -- doesn't take up a load of disk space, and the window manager runs smoothly. Firefox is a bit slower, but still useable -- I've just been using dillo (much faster) for most browsing and use firefox when I need the frames or java.
I just used "current.iso" from:
< http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/ >
Posted by benjamin1254 on May 28 2005,04:30
well i have an old laptop with windows 3.11 and it only had a floppy drive any ideas?
Posted by Taino on May 28 2005,04:58
| Quote (shadowman @ May 27 2005,23:46) |
| I have a toshiba laptop w/ Pentium 130Mhz, 48MB ram, and 1.2Gig HD -- DSL runs great on that. I did a HD install on mine. I just did created a 96meg linux swap partition, and have everything else on the other. I've actually gotten a few other distros to run (albeit slowly) on this thing, but DSL has been the best so far -- doesn't take up a load of disk space, and the window manager runs smoothly. Firefox is a bit slower, but still useable -- I've just been using dillo (much faster) for most browsing and use firefox when I need the frames or java. I just used "current.iso" from: < http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/ > |
Great
thanks for the tips, ill get the CD made up and see about splitting the drive for efficiency, probably like below../dsl
/swap
/fat32 <-- for storage..
this should work for me.
thanks for the reply and the help..
Posted by cbagger01 on May 28 2005,05:10
You can try a floppy install, but if your computer is too old (386, 486sx) or has too little RAM (16MB or less), you will not be able to create a usable graphical system. You may be able to run in console mode, however.I would suggest trying Deli Linux or Basiclinux if your computer is that old/lowRAM.
As for the Toshiba 440CS, it should work fine with DSL but a DOS swap file or a linux swap partition is a must with 24MB of RAM.
My advice is to create a minimum 64MB swap space (128MB preferred). If you wish to do a DSL hard disk install, you will need somelike like a 200MB Linux (EXT2 for example) partition for your installation.
My advice:
400MB partition for Windows 95 or Windows 98lite (Win98 tweaked down to save space and RAM) FAT
336MB partition for DSL EXT2 type
64MB swap partition for DSL Linux swap type
Or if space is tight, you can do a 400MB EXT2 linux partition and then create and activate a 64MB DOS swap file on your Win 95 partition.
Posted by cbagger01 on May 28 2005,05:14
Also,To minimize RAM usage, you should boot up with the "noicons" cheatcode.
I would also use the framebuffer Xserver and maybe use cheatcodes to disable unneeded hardware drivers:
nousb noagp nofirewire atapicd noscsi
These will save RAM usage.
Finally, I would give the opera.uci extension a tryout. It runs faster on old computers than Firefox. Dillo is also great, but Opera is a more full featured web browser.
Posted by Taino on May 28 2005,05:24
| Quote (cbagger01 @ May 28 2005,01:10) |
| My advice is to create a minimum 64MB swap space (128MB preferred). If you wish to do a DSL hard disk install, you will need somelike like a 200MB Linux (EXT2 for example) partition for your installation. |
Some good ideas there..
Thanks for help, ill work on some different configurations over the weekend and see what runs the smoothest, but yea i think this is gonna work out pretty good.
Hopefully ill be posting back here using it with a Dsl install soon.
Posted by Gemini on June 01 2005,19:12
Welcome everybody, I've got a little problem, I do owe laptop, 386 sx, 4 MB RAM, HD-120 MB . I would like to run any of the linux distributions. Could you recommend anything ? Is there even a possibility to run Linux on such system??
Posted by cbagger01 on June 02 2005,02:14
OK, you win.DSL will not work on such an old system (386sx 4MB RAM).
However, I would give these ones a try:
BasicLinux (try both the current version and the lowmem 1.8 version):
< http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/ >
or maybe even DeliLinux:
< http://www.delilinux.de/ >