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Re: Linux on 486 with 16Mb RAM



On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 08:16:32PM +0300, Adi Stav wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 01:59:51AM +0300, Alon Altman wrote:
> > Hi,
> >   Which distro do you recommend for a Linux box on an 486DX4 with 16Mb RAM
> > and few GB of HD? I tried MDK7.1 and it had seg fault during install.
> > RHAT7.1 did not agree to install.
> > 
> >   Any suggestions?
> 
> Debian. It can have a very minimal and flexible install, and is
> (I feel) more committed to support all hardware equally as
> opposed to the modern commercial distributions which try to
> support newer hardware better. Possibly Slackware which was mentioned
> here has the same advnatgae.
> 
> My main GNU/Linux machine is an 486DX4/100MHz with 24MBof RAM 
> (upgraded from 16MB). It is running Debian Potato, installed and is
> working like a charm as a router, file server, mail server and web proxy
> to a 4-computer home nework, as well as my desktop machine for most
> of my tasks (mostly IRC, mail and lynx). I haven't tried running X on
> it for several years now, but for text it's great. Sometimes it takes
> thirty or fourty seconds to load and sort my 40MB linux-il or my 45MB 
> debian-devel mail folders, but other than that I have no complaints.
> Go for Debian.

I've installed slink on a 486DX2 with 8 MB of RAM and it was impossible
to work with. Debian is not exactly a fitting distribution for under-powered
computers as its packaging system is quite demanding. It took my 486 around
20 minutes to merge the package lists downloaded by apt. I then switched to
a home-grown distribution which worked rather well. It was slightly similar
to slackware, but without the annoying bsd initialization and with some of
the Debian utilities.

	Regards, Yotam Rubin

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