Antique Distros? 96
An anonymous reader asks: "I've got an old 486 that isn't doing anything (it has RedHat 6.2 on it and even that barely works), and I have been considering installing an even older distribution to make it more usable. I'm looking for something I can download still, has a good bit of programs, has X, and is still a relatively reasonable download for a 56K modem. I would like to download the distro with my new computer, then burn a CD or do something like that to install it on my old computer. The computer is a 486 at 33Mhz with 16MB RAM and a 1.5GB HDD. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated."
Best idea... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Best idea... (Score:2)
Re:Best idea... (Score:2)
Don't worry, he does.
Early Slackware (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Early Slackware (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Early Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)
I have another server that's even worse, a 486-dx2-66 with 16MB ram. I was having trouble compiling a current package with the ancient gcc, and rather than attempt to rebuild gcc I tried out newer distributions with it.
Red Hat 7.0 was so unbelievably slow getting booted and running after installation it was terrible. I then got out my heretofore-unused Slackware 7.1 disks and installed that as a test... it ran JUST AS FAST as the original installation of slackware did, despite being like five years newer.
(This was a few months ago, so no I didn't have current versions of slackware and redhat to test, and didn't feel like spending a week downloading the iso's, especially since slackware worked for me).
So my vote: slackware. Seriously.
Re:Early Slackware (Score:3, Interesting)
The nice thing about slackware, not doing a lot of fancy hardware detection is that i was able to remove those disks, put them in a faster machine, install everything, recompile a kernel specifically for the 486, slap the disks back into the old cae and away I want. took less than an hour to get everything set up...
Re:Early Slackware (Score:1)
It is on its 3rd motherboard, although the first was the closest to a 486 (a MediaGX with reported in
I also had a server we used for yearbook which went from a 486 33Mhz 8MB and a 4GB drive to a Pentium 90 128 MB with the 4GB IDE, 2.0 GB SCSI, DAT, then added a 4.3 GB SCSI, another processor, swapped processors with adapter boards (swapped the 2 90s out for 2 200Mhz MMX down clocked to 180, bogomips/processor went up 10x...), another 4GB IDE drive. I will say that thing was a monster, but it did last for over 6 months (summer!) w/o a reboot, better than the school's NT servers which I think had a high of 1 month.
Re:Early Slackware (Score:2)
It ran fairly well. No accelerated drivers for X, or anything else other than Windows 3.11, so it lived in text mode.
It ran surprisingly well. Of course, the 386SL is an odd beast, with on-chip memory and cache controllers -- this was doubtless the source of some improvement in speed over what I expected.
Some time later, something-or-other trounced the hard drive rather completely, so I installed Slackware 8.1.
It runs surprisingly well. Some things even seemed to be a touch faster than they were with 3.9.
Thus, I'd like to submit that -all- versions of Slackware are suitable for old hardware.
Re:Early Slackware (Score:1)
Start the flame wars (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, slackware, I guess, but that's not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I installed slackware on a 486sx laptop with 4MB of RAM and only a floppy drive, (although they've since dispensed with the disksets) and it ran just fine. X was slow, but that's par for the course, deal with it.
Really, I don't see why the distribution matters as much as the software you're putting on it. I mean, if you install KDE, it's going to be dog-slow. That's KDE. Try installing blackbox or fvwm or even windowmaker: all fairly lightweight-but-usable window managers. Every distro has them (almost).
It's not a matter of picking an old enough distro, it's a matter of picking your software wisely. No, a "default install" will not cut it. You're going to have to be selective. If you're low on disk space, try nano, vi, jed or jove instead of emacs. as far as X-based edtiors go, you might as well forget about it. On a 486, even kedit is pretty heavyweight.
Re:Um, slackware, I guess, but that's not the prob (Score:2)
Install lrp or ipcop and use it as a router/firewall, it should be ok for that sort of use.
It may be ok as a print server for a lan, but I'm not so sure about that - maybe a minimal install would cover it.
Oh, even though I'm an emacs man (or t.h.e. for some stuff) I really wouldn't install it here, either :-) Small is beautiful here.
Try old Debian. (Score:4, Interesting)
http://archive.debian.org/dists/
Hey I have one of those too! (Score:2)
What I've been thinking, and here's the part that's useful to you, is if it wouldnt be a whole lot faster to just run it as a VNC client and let my speedy box do the actual processing and disk-spinning. I did download the dos VNC client but apparently its for 32-bit dos prompts and not real 16-bit ms-dos?
I guess I could try my hand at some sort of LFSish setup but I'm still a bit of a n00b
Re:Hey I have one of those too! (Score:1)
Just curious...
Re:Hey I have one of those too! (Score:2)
Re:Hey I have one of those too! (Score:1)
I just can't believe there's a version of IE 5 for 3.1.
Is it even remotely like IE5/w32 as far as rendering goes?
Re:Hey I have one of those too! (Score:2)
As for the latest 16 bit versiond of Opera (3.62) or Netscape (4.7), well, they're both rather primitive, and while Opera may be fast, NS4 takes more time to render a page than it takes to download it.
And Lynx sucks because it's text only. Dont even know if theres a version for dos/win3.x
Re:Hey I have one of those too! (Score:2)
Re:Hey I have one of those too! (Score:2)
Don't use old tools (Score:5, Informative)
I too faced this dilemma when trying to make use of a batch of 486 machines donated to our computer lab. My solution required a bit of elbow grease, but ensured that my machines both ran acceptably and had the latest and most secure versions of software available to them:
I just did this recently (Score:5, Interesting)
I used Debian Slink, but I have access to a broadband internet connection. The X Configuration was a major pain. You should look into a mini distribution that comes with TinyX or something based on UCLibC if you really want the most bang for your download time. Remember, VesaFB is your friend.
I'm also looking for a distro specifically for old 486's, but I am yet to find one. I have run across this [qnx.com] commercial OS, though, which is pretty cool.
Re:I just did this recently (Score:2)
I'm an idiot... (Score:2)
That should have said: I downloaded Slink, but ended up using Potato... for exactly the reasons you cite. It's late...
One option (Score:4, Insightful)
2488MB may seem to be a big download for 56k, but remember that you are getting a fully working system with packages included. It used to be that all us suckers had to download huge stuff on 56k modems.
(waits to be modded down for mentioning *BSD.)
Re:One option (Score:4, Informative)
The only problem is that the installer for the more recent FreeBSD versions require more than 8MB of RAM (12MB is the bare minimum I think). For firewall and/or router purposes, try out ClosedBSD [closedbsd.org] which is based on PicoBSD (which in turn is based on an earlier release of FreeBSD). You can download the ISO from there.
For even a smaller install, NetBSD might do the trick, as well as OpenBSD.
OpenBSD and NetBSD (Score:5, Informative)
I'd also suggest trying out OpenBSD; I've been running it on an old ThinkPad wtih 486/25MHz processor and 12 MB of RAM. I can run Emacs 20.x and the OpenSSH server on that machine, and still have about 6 - 8 MB of free RAM. I use it mostly as a type-writer, but GCC 2.95 is perfectly usable on it.
One thing to be wary of (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm seriously thinking about installing gentoo on a 486, 16MB, and just for grins, do it via floppy and dial-up. As long as the phone line stays up while I need it, I imagine I can get Gentoo installed in about one month.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Funny)
Ever.
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
The process leaves you with plenty of time for other activities.
i can't suggest a distro, but i can suggest an os (Score:2, Informative)
FreeBSD works great (Score:2, Informative)
Debian (Score:1)
Re:Debian (Score:2)
Start with Slackware or better still OpenBSD. OpenBSD is everything you need in a *nix install and nothing more. My old OpenBSD 2.7 is only 320MB with X v3. 70MB of that is additional packages. This mostly default install includes X, gcc, apache, and 15MB of perl. Samba, Vim, and Emacs were installed from packages.
Re:Debian (Score:2)
Older versions (Score:2)
BSD's (Score:2)
You can download NetBSD 1.5.3 base and X or get a cdrom and it may work for you. Use blackbox as the WM or something small (no gnome or kde) and you should be okay. You'll be able to run many apps too. You can use links -gui for a decent gui web browser that does not take up lots of ram or cpu.
NetBSD (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not trying to disuade you from installing Linux by this comment (I love Debian), just telling you about my OS of choice for older machines.
Re:NetBSD (Score:1)
-Dom
RedHat (Score:2)
However, it's likely to get owned pretty fast if you just put a stock, say, RH4.2 machine out in the world. What might not be a bad idea is to take 6.2, compile the latest 2.2 series kernel with no bells and whistles, and minimize the hoggish servers running on the box. It can obviously be made to be much quicker than a standard 6.2 install.
Another alternative: RULE (Score:2)
Why antique? (Score:2)
The best way to approach this is to do a minimal text-mode install, and then slowly add the files you need to make it useable. Yes, you will end up installing some packages you don't need (or can't use!) such as Mesa, but they won't slow you down. If harddrive space is an issue, start paring down such things as documentation: Install a minimal set of man pages and rm -r
Next, make sure you can get X up and running with a light window manager. That rules out KDE, Gnome, and pretty much everything that's been "new" in the past 5 years. When set up right, FVWM can be both fast and functional. Personally, I found Windowmaker a bit too slow for a low-end 486.
If you can get some more RAM, get it! If not, tweak carefully. Cut everywhere you can to turn off EVERY service that you don't really need. I know, lots will end up getting swapped out, but not all (you don't really need cron, do you?)...
Also, make the services and programs that you *do* need as light-weight as possible. Limit your fonts and pixmaps in X, use a lightweight terminal (rxvt) instead of xterm, etc. Top (man top) sorting by memory usage is your friend. For software you just can't run on that machine and don't have a viable replacement for, don't forget that you can run them on another machine. Just ssh to it and fire up Mozilla there!
What you shouldn't waste your time on is custom builds of things. It's not worth it. I've tried. If you know what you're doing, you will save 15k of RAM by custom-building your kernel. It won't be noticably faster, and you'll just be dissapointed. Of course, it is a great learning experience!
My votes: Slackware 3.0, or perhaps Red Hat 4.2. (Score:3, Informative)
Red Hat 4.2 used to run just dandy on desktops I had with around the level of hardware power you're talking about.
If you want to be lean and mean, go with Slackware. If you want something a bit more user-friendly/desktop-ish, go with Red Hat. However, I must say that installing Slackware 3.0 was never terribly hard for me. It was the first time I installed Linux, and the whole process went rather smoothly. If you know any existing modern distros well enough, Slack 3 should be a cakewalk for you.
LTSP (Score:2, Interesting)
See ltsp.org for more details.
Get your hands dirty (Score:1)
Also, have you thought about a thin client/diskless node setup? is a great example of one of the many type of distros like this... [sourceforge.net]
Maybe not antique ditros.... (Score:1)
1) If you want the best performace with linux, you will propably have to re-compile everything. You can do all this by hand by following the procedures giving by the Linux from Scratch [distrowatch.com] projet. If this is too much for you, you can go with source-type distributions [distrowatch.com].
2) If you don't want to go down the "compile-for-3-days" path, you can try modern distros of linux [distrowatch.com]or BSD: FreeBSD [freebsd.org], NetBSD [netbsd.org] or OpenBSD [openbsd.org] (there is a debian "port" [debian.org] of netbsd and one of freebsd that *could* make life easier). Most are compiled for i386 and can be used if you...
3) Carefully choose your applications! Don't use Kde or Gnome unless it has been carefully stripped of all the surplus. Don't use Mozilla, try pheonix instead.
4) Try it! The best way to know if this is better than that is to try it out.
If it's still too slow or un-usable for you, you can try to give you computer a specific task... like X-terminal [slashdot.org] or even a router [freesco.org]...
I did make some old machines working again with these simples guidelines but i think the most important thing is to...
5)Have fun! I know i did!
Aspartame solution (Score:2)
Free Clue! Short time only! Void where prohibited. (Score:1)
Redhat 7 will run *fine* on there. Mandrake whatever the hell the version number it is now will run *fine* on there. Just be picky about the software you run. Don't expect to install KDE3 or Gnome and recieve reasonable performance.
Lord help us from the hordes of folks who know too little to be useful, and just enough to be dangerous (or incredibly annoying).
Re:Free Clue! Short time only! Void where prohibit (Score:1)
That's very odd. What is it doing to make you say that "it doesn't work very well"? I have a 386-20 running 6.2 just fine with about the same amount of ram and about 300M of disk. I also have a 486-25 w/ 4M of ram running 6.2, but with not a 2.2 kernel. The stock 2.2 kernel won't even let you run any of the init scripts. A stripped down 2.0 or 2.4 kernel works ok though (the 2.0 one gives me 3Mb for userland instead of 2Mb for the 2.4 kernel), although more than one or two users will drive it into swap.
Don't use anything more than 8-bit color if you try to run X though. Even with a VLB card, 16 bit color was noticeably slower.
Re:not old new! (Score:1)
Try OpenBSD (Score:2)
I am currently staying with friends who also use a 486 to share and firewall their cable modem using the Linux based IPCop [ipcop.org]. Setting up old 486s to do this is more flexible and much cheaper than buying a dedicated hardware router (although they also tend to be a bit noiser).
slack, and cpu (Score:2)
Depending on RAM... (Score:1)
If you only have a small harddisc, you should not use TASKSEL, but install a very basic system. AFTER that select the packages you really need. You might run into problems even with the base syetem when using very small (notebook) HDs, i.e. smaller than 200MB.
I am using Debian on old 386/486/K6's as well as new P3/P4's, so I might be biased...
slack 3.3 (Score:1)
Besides, slackware is a great tool for learning the innards of linux. It forces you to learn how linux really works.
Openbsd 3.2 or Basic Linux (Score:1, Troll)
Instead go for Openbsd, which is dead easy to install, secure and perfect for low-end machines.
If you're dead keen to run Linux, why not go for Basic Linux [ibiblio.org] which I used successfully on a 386 with 8MB.
Cheers,
Dirk
Have a Tiny Woody (Score:2)
Mandrake 5.3!! (Score:1)
Lightest of the Light Linux (Score:2)
Try this if you can... (Score:1)
Early distros are still available (Score:2)
Or you could get this [kernel.org] just for fun.
developerWorks posted an article on this recently (Score:1)
To quote:
Hardware is only as old as the software it runs: a modern operating system and up-to-date applications return an older system to productivity. This article provides best practices and step-by-step guidance on how to build a working Linux system on older hardware or on modern hardware with limited memory and storage.
Check in out here [ibm.com].
A number of choices (Score:2)
and the answer is: (Score:1)