iezy . be

19/06/2007 19:33:29 UTC+00:00

Linux on an ancient laptop

My nephew asked if I could put Linux on a 2nd hand laptop he bought for a few bucks.
It's a Compaq 6x86MX with MediaGX MMX and a whopping 32MB RAM. It has a nice shiny "Designed for Windows98" on it...

The Windows98 installation wasn't working so well, and for some reason there was no USB support.
So my nephew was hoping for better luck with Linux...

Ubuntu - my main OS of choice - was out of the question, as it needs at least 128MB of RAM.

So I searched at the ubuntuforums for some lightweight alternatives, and found Puppy Linux. This OS is mainly used for installing on USB sticks and the iso was only 80MB. It seemed perfect... but not perfect enough. It took a little while until I managed to install it. And then I realized that it needs at least 64MB RAM. Booting it was possible, but I couldn't get any application to start, except for the CLI.

Another recommendation on the forums was DSL: Damn Small Linux. The name sure sounds promising! Installation went really smooth, apart from the frame buffering I had to enable. It took me a little while to figure this out, but after this, everything worked out of the box. Quite a good speed too...

The only thing I need to figure out, is what my nephew wants to do with it. I doubt that this baby will be able to play video files smoothly. And because the battery is dead, you can't even call it a laptop anymore...

comments: 1. (details)