Installing Linux On Old Hardware? 507
cptdondo writes "I've got an old laptop that I've been trying to resurrect. It has a 486MHz CPU, 28 MB of RAM, a 720 MB HD, a 1.44MB floppy drive, and 640x480 VESA video. It does not have a CD drive, USB port, or a network port. It has PCMCIA, and I have a network card for that. My goal is to get a minimal GUI that lets me run a basic browser like Dillo and open a couple of xterms. I've spent the last few days trying to find a Linux distro that will work on that machine. I've done a lot of work on OpenWRT, so naturally I though that would work, but X appears to be broken in the recent builds — I can't get the keyboard to work. (OK, not surprising; OpenWRT is made to run on WiFi Access Point hardware which doesn't have a keyboard...) All of the 'mini' distros come as a live CD; useless on a machine without a CD-ROM. Ditto for the USB images. I'm also finding that the definition of a 'mini' distro has gotten to the point of 'It fits on a 3GB partition and needs 128 MB RAM to run.' Has Linux really become that bloated? Do we really need 2.2 GB of cruft to bring up a simple X session? Is there a distro that provides direct ext2 images instead of live CDs?"
A rare item. (Score:2, Interesting)
If you're lucky and can actually find it , QNX had a whole distro on a floppy. :)
It was intended as a demo , but had full features like file browsing and some net.
That might be able to boot the machine. But frankly , i know of no other distro
still able to boot and install via a floppy.This will prove interresting to follow.
Im just as eager to find out as you
Happy hacking
Try Debian (Score:3, Interesting)
Older versions of Debian supported floppy installs. The last time I tried it (with etch I think) I had some issues that annoyed me and the response I got is that nobody on the dev. team wanted to suffer with a kernel image that doesn't have the kitchen sink loaded so they crippled/dropped floppy install support. Still once you have an older system running it is trivial to upgrade if you have some connectivity.
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:3, Interesting)
Older than it needs to be. I ran Slackware 4 (just about contemporary with Redhat 6.0) on a laptop with lower specs than that, no problem.
The problem with old distros is old browsers (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a similar laptop, although mine only has 16 MB or RAM. I've got a better processor, though. Anyway, I see several people have suggested run a distro from that era. Indeed that works--sort of. My old laptop runs fine with a Redhat from that era, or a Slackware (or whatever Windows it came with, for that matter).
The reason I say it works "sort of" is that if you just run a distro from that era, you have a browser of that era. I had hoped to use my old laptop as basically a terminal for configuring routers and other things like that which have web interfaces.
The problem is, all my routers have web interfaces that assume browser features that are too new for that era. I was not able to find a browser that was new enough to actually work with my typical consumer home router and still run acceptably on the old system. I think I got Konqueror to work once--but it took something like an hour for it to start.
I think the browser is going to be the determining factor as to whether or not this is feasible for you.
Re:Sadly (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Older Distros (Score:5, Interesting)
Or a current BSD distribution. On old hardware I typically install netbsd. I have tried Minix but the hardware compatibility is not good.
Re:too old (Score:2, Interesting)
Because he can?
Unless you *have* to have linux.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Go for NetBSD instead.
LTSP, if the PCMCIA card supports PXEBOOT (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PCMCIA CD-ROM or IDE Adapter (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to also agree with some other people that suggest getting a newer laptop, at least one with a CD drive.
Or at least a network card that supports PXE-boot.
Re:too old (Score:2, Interesting)
The first computer I bought with my own money was a P75. We throw away P3's at work. We're throwing away HP DL320's and moving them all to VM's.
"It's dead, Jim".
I think when an iPod Touch or modern smartphone has more power than your computer, you can't really call what you have a "computer" in the modern sense of the word. Hell I bought a new iPhone 3GS today for $100 -- at that price point it's a disposable item.
Re:What? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, a 486 with 28Mb of ram is an excellent computer for webbrowsing, except for two very small nits: it doesn't have enough ram or cpu. This is beyond pointless, this is entering the mental masturbation territory -- sure, you can make it work, given a large enough hammer (read: probably lose a few days tailoring a distro that "fits" on all those constraints), but in the end you'll have like 20Mb to run the browser, which in today's world wouldn't even be suficient to render slashdot. So, again, what is the point? To feel good about your geeky acomplishments? Yep, that sounds like mental masturbation to me.
Re:Fedora/CentOS LiveCDs do contain native extX fs (Score:3, Interesting)
However, it's still pointless to do what the submitter is attempting. 486 machines weren't even interesting targets 9 years ago. Any recent version of Fedora won't boot on a 486, since Fedora is now compiled for i686 and up. Even if you got it to boot, it would be too slow for a modern X, and nearly too slow even for a console.
The only modern-day task that a 486 machine can still perform acceptably is IP routing. Most people still have "slow" (by networking standards) DSL or cable connections. An old machine is perfectly capable of handling such speeds. But it's still a very bad idea. Energy costs are so high these days that buying a new low-power router machine is much cheaper than running a 486 even in the medium term (1-2 years), and the new machine will be much more capable and featureful. For $99 you can get a SheevaPlug [wikipedia.org] which comes with Ubuntu and consumes 5 watts.
If I was setting up a 486 machine anyway, my distribution of choice would be Voyage Linux [voyage.hk]. Voyage is just a very small Debian Lenny installation with a few additional (small) packages for embedded environments. It doesn't ship as an ext2 image, but rather as a tarball that you untar, which is just as good. The kernel is compiled for 486, so (unlike Fedora) it will actually boot. In theory, you can apt-get anything in the Debian repositories (including X, GNOME, etc.), but in practice it won't work on a 486. There are just too many differences between modern X11R7.5 and contemporary versions to the 486 like X11R5 or X11R6. I've done this before, and I can tell you that you won't be happy with the GUI even if you get it to run.
A lot of commenters have suggested running an old distribution. This is a bad idea on any machine that you plan to connect to the internet. Even if there's a firewall in between, old versions of Linux have so many security holes that they represent an unacceptable risk. Old Linux versions are just as insecure as old Windows versions. Don't make the spambot problem worse. As a side note, distributions that provide no mechanism for in-place security upgrades are also insecure. This rules out most mini-distros like DSL or Puppy Linux.
Basically, there's no way to run X securely on such old hardware. Just forget about it. If you intend to use it as a text terminal, then it might be worth setting up. Even then, don't leave it on all the time, or your electricity bill will dwarf any savings. (If you're not paying for the electricity, still, do the rest of us a favor, and save the planet from global warming or something.)
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:3, Interesting)
Slackware was one of the great floppy-loadable distros. I don't think they break it up into floppy-sized chunks any more, but I remember all the fun of trying to install Slackware 3-point-something from floppies. The biggest problem was that HD floppies were sufficiently unreliable that I was constantly re-writing floppy disks on another machine.
Also, Slackware was good for making minimal installs. In particular, Red Hat tried to install and enable EVERYTHING. There were so many buffer-overrun bugs (at least through Red Hat 6.x) that it wasn't even funny.
One nice thing about Slackware was that you could start up from a boot floppy, then you would have enough of Linux running from a ramdisk that you could format your hard drive and start copying each install floppy to the hard disk before even starting. If you have a network card with a supported driver, you can even copy the rest of the distro over via FTP. By installing from the hard disk, you avoid any problems with disk errors on the floppy disks. As long as your hard disk is big enough, this is the best way to go.
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually it's not hard to set up slackware or even debian to do a netboot install.
If it has a network card you can configure them to do a netboot.
Re: A rare item. (Score:5, Interesting)
why use a floppy? take out the hard drive and install the base OS to the drive from a host PC. I do that all the time with tablets as they dont have CD or floppy.
Re:too old (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell I bought a new iPhone 3GS today for $100 -- at that price point it's a disposable item.
WTF!?
Sorry, but something that costs $100 isn't a disposable item, it still costs a reasonable amount of effort to earn that much money. Our currency hasn't become that inflated yet...
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:2, Interesting)
It looks like this person did exactly the same thing about 5 years ago. He/she even documented the process:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/network-install.html
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:0, Interesting)
DSL is dead. Tiny Core Linux is the replacement. (linux 2.6 though)
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with old dist vers / DSL etc.. (Score:4, Interesting)
The MAIN problem I see with using old now unsupported distribution versions of BSD / LINUX is that security patches for such versions and their packaged applications are no longer generally being offered / maintained, and there will be dozens or hundreds of potentially trivially remotely exploitable code execution, DOS, and other security vulnerabilities in the OS, the services, and the applications, and there will be nothing you can easily do to fix these problems lacking official maintenance and contemporary patch package releases for the version you are running. Even some of the "long term support" versions of products are only supported for a few years, and the oldest of which that are still supported are still often too new for the type of hardware the OP refers to. If the OP wanted to compile her/his own BSD/LINUX distribution, there would be better hope of using modern version / patched software but configured to run on that old hardware, but that is probably way too much work just for an "appliance" in search of a convenient distribution.
The problem with non mainstream distributions like Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, LTSP, et. al. seems to be either still insufficient portability to old CPUs with little RAM, or an infrequently updated monolithic distribution model that isn't really based on individually freshly updated packages / patches such that the most recent overall distribution is probably months or a year or more out of date with respect to security patches and bug fixes.
I've got an old 64MB Pentium based laptop with a fine KB / screen / HDD / CD but a slow CPU and not much RAM that I've also
been looking to turn into a basic web/email terminal for very basic internet access (e.g. no flash, no silverlight, not even AJAX sites, et. al.).
I've failed to boot the most appropriate known Debian Live CD version on it. I've failed to boot Linux Mint 6 & 7 on it. I've failed to boot Fedora Live CD and Ubuntu Live CD on it as well. It seems like most modern LINUX distributions don't like running on 64 MBy RAM, or with CPUs with these kinds of limitations.
I've run into similar problems with a Pentium based Fujitsu laptop with 256MBy RAM too.
I believe part of the problem is likely something that I started running into with LINUX and BSD distributions several years ago with my Mini ITX VIA EPIA C7 / EDEN based motherboards. They don't support the platform OPTIONAL X86 CMOV instruction, but for a long time there was (and maybe still is) a GCC bug that emitted code that uses CMOV but doesn't do the mandated run time check to see if the instruction is supported and provide a work-around. Further some of these are not "i686" class CPUs and may lack other features that some kernels are built to rely upon, whatever those are.. SSE, SSE2, whatever. Because of the CMOV GCC / kernel problem and the transition from "i386" compatible kernels to "i686" compatible kernels being commonplace / the minimum supported by the distribution media, I started to have to compile custom BSD (OpenBSD / FreeBSD) and LINUX kernels on some machines as of several years ago.
Now I would assume the GCC bug relating to CMOV is fixed or well known, but AFAICT the distribution maintainers just mostly stopped caring about old CPUs and limited RAM configurations and turned on optimizations for e.g. i686, i586+CMOV or whatever by default for their packaged binaries / media, hence perpetuating the incompatibilities with old i386 / i486 CPUs.
I wish there was either an embedded version of something like VNC / RDP / X that could act as a graphic / audio / mouse terminal to a remote PC/VM that actually ran the OS and applications. AFAIK most of those things need a fairly respectable OS distribution and X11 and so on to run on top of, thus making the problem of having a secure terminal almost as hard as having a secure PC with a small general purpose distribution.
Otherwise I wish there was some kind of BSD / LINUX distribution that was geared to handle hardware with old i386 / i486 class
My $.02 (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm in general agreement with the "that's WAY to old to be worthwhile" crowd here but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and ask "resurrect for what purpose?" There are very few thing that can truly be done with a 486 in 2009:
So really, yeah, I can see there are things you can do, and I can appreciate not wanting to waste something, but I just can't see anything really worthwhile that could be done with this hardware outside of single-purpose stuff like a dumb terminal, recipe database, weather station, etc. Only worth pursuing if you have lots of spare time or just really love to tinker of the sake of tinkering.
Also: even though it's a laptop, I can't imagine the battery is any good, and replacements are probably hard to find by now, so it'll either be stationary, or portable to the extent that you can go anywhere as long as you're within 10 feet of a power outlet. So I can't see you taking this thing to coffeeshops or conferences or anything. If you have a particular goal you want to reach--say you love taking notes in vi and want something you can take to conferences--then you'd be better off getting a newer unit with wireless and a decent battery.
Re:too old (Score:3, Interesting)
Many people have a higher opinion of the value of their time than your employer. I, however, get paid well, often enough, precisely because I'm good at fiddling with underpowered secondhand PCs...
Sure, it takes a bit more time and effort to get a nice, clean, tuned and optimized installation, rather than instal and run at startup every bit of unnecessary crap software on the planet. But compare the cost of a used Pentium-2 PC in quantities, with bulk trucking rates, to that of a nice new system... (Hmm... $50 vs $300) and then multiply that across 1,000 stations. Then consider just how much horsepower you really need to run that terminal emulator and a couple simple business apps written 15 years ago...
Yes, at a quarter-million USD, the price difference is certainly enough to pay even a very highly-paid IT pro for a full YEAR of "tinkering". Never mind a small horde of PC Techs.
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:3, Interesting)
Damn Small Linux is very convenient. I have an old ThinkPad from '97 with DSL. This allows me to connect it to the wireless network and run all my apps remotely from my main box. :)
Applications run faster that way than they do from the harddrive.
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:too old (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell it's probably the spec for a Panasonic Toughbook for all we know. Gorgeous on the outside, and it'll take a bullet for you. No net? Talk about a secure motherf***er...
He can smoke cigarettes, have a permanent 5 o'clock shadow, and can claim KGB credentials.
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, all of those considerations aren't a big deal.
I installed Linux on a very old tablet, with no CDRom, Floppy, and it wouldn't boot to USB. The easy solution? I pulled the drive out. {sigh} I don't know why people don't think of that.
I started at about 10pm, so a parts run was out of the question. It was only a 20Gb drive, but in his case, I'd suggest buying a bigger drive. Maybe he can find one on eBay that'll work in it. Otherwise, he can do a conservative install. I'm a Slackware guy, so that's always my choice in distros, even though I've used just about everything out there at some point.
I stuck the drive in my much more modern laptop, and booted to the Slackware install CD. I did the install normally, and then recompiled the kernel for exactly the hardware that was in the tablet, and included just a very few drivers that the laptop needed (like network and IDE controller). Since it was old hardware with limited memory, I didn't want to load anything that wasn't necessary. I followed that up by cleaning the startup of absolutely everything that I didn't want. When it was done, and I saw it booted successfully on the laptop, although optimized for the much older slower processor.
I pulled the drive back out of the laptop, and put it back in the tablet. Voila, a working tablet. Some things were kind of a pain to get working, such as the touch screen, because no one had supported it in many years. I wanted a modern distro, I didn't want to go back to the 2.0 kernel that people had used when it was new-ish.
I've done this a lot in the past, when I'm trying to resurrect machines that would take forever to build kernels for. For example, I had an old 386 once that I wanted to use as a firewall. I did all the work on a Pentium machine (modern at the time). The compile time for the kernel on the Pentium was something like 20 minutes. I did recompile the kernel once on the 386, and it took something like 4 hours. After that, any time I wanted to recompile, I pulled the drive, as the time it took to move the drive to a more modern machine was insignificant compared to the difference in compile time.
Any time I build a kernel, there are a few drivers I always use, like the PIIX IDE controller, and a small assortment of network drivers (I have a lot of 3com and Intel network cards laying around). That way, I can always move it to another machine, work on the drive, and then put it back in the slow machine.
So, that's my solution for his problem. No floppy install. No need for a CDRom. No crying over the lack of USB.
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:2, Interesting)
Three days to compile a 2.6.28 kernel last winter on my 486sx25 with 32 MB of RAM... (Yes I know I could have crosscompiled). But it does work.
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:3, Interesting)
No. No, I usually don't answer ACs. In this case I do, since I used to use DSL and came across Tiny Core via this post of yours, and downloaded it.
'No' is the answer to your suggestion, alas. It doesn't run in 32 MB of RAM, even. It simply panics the kernel. And the OP said '28 MB of RAM'. I increased the RAM to 128 and found it to boot fast as lightning, and consume around 36 MB (using 'top') by just being up. Alas, no.
DeLi linux (Score:2, Interesting)
I put this on a 15 yo toshiba satellite pro (p75, 40MB ram, 750MB hd), works fine.
Getting wireless from a pcmcia card took a little work.
The CD rom, which is a custom toshiba thing, worked fine which was pretty impressive.
Ofcourse once the itch to get everything running was satisfied, it just sits on a shelf now..:)
http://www.delilinux.de/ [delilinux.de]
Re:When you have a machine from that era... (Score:3, Interesting)
Debian used to work well on older systems, but I wouldn't say that these days. Two years ago, Debian on a Pentium 75 was usable with a minimal install, and would fit on a 400MB hard drive. Those days are long gone. I'm about to replace my two Pentium systems with Pentium III, which rankles my sensibilities since I see that as major overkill for a simple firewall and a DNS/DHCP/IRC server.
OpenBSD might be a better choice, actually. It runs on minimal systems and uses very little disk space, so he would be able to only add the stuff he wanted.
If he had unlimited time to work on it, Linux from Scratch would work well, but unless he cross compiled it on a modern machine it would take forever to actually assemble.