radioboy Posted January 1, 2004 Share Posted January 1, 2004 i have an old compaq armada 120mhz laptop, and i want to install a fairly new linux distro (either kernel 2.4 or 2.6). it's got a gig of space, and no cdrom boot capability, so support for a PCMCIA CDROM drive is a must (or even a network install could be done). i don't want any RAM or LiveCD distros... what are your suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tek Posted January 1, 2004 Share Posted January 1, 2004 You could do a network install of Slackware 9.1. You can easily install a comfortable Slackware with 1GB. I'd recommend a lightweight window manager like openbox, or maybe XFCE. Unfortunately things like the compiler take up a lot of space, but it comes in handy when you want to update your software. There won't be an awful lot of space for your personal files, but there will be enough to work comfortably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radioboy Posted January 1, 2004 Author Share Posted January 1, 2004 i always did like slack on my other comps ive used it on :yes: any suggestions on a good network install tutorial? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted January 1, 2004 Veteran Share Posted January 1, 2004 i have an old compaq armada 120mhz laptop, and i want to install a fairly new linux distro (either kernel 2.4 or 2.6). it's got a gig of space, and no cdrom boot capability, so support for a PCMCIA CDROM drive is a must (or even a network install could be done). i don't want any RAM or LiveCD distros... what are your suggestions? You didn't mention what your RAM was, but on an old 120MHz machine, it can't be much, so I woudl not recommend a RAM based "liveCD" distro, either! Do you want a GUI? It will be painfully slow (stay away from Gnome/KDE, unless you don't mind a bunch of lag). TWM shoudl provide a GUI without a lot of overhead. Your GUI apps will still be sluggish, though. If you want a newbie-friendly version, I would recommend different hardware (so you don't think Linux is slow - because it is NOT slow). Almost any distro will work fine (I think). If you are doing just a text install, there are less differences than if you run a GUI. (a lot of the customizations are in GUI-relasted items) In the end, I think I will recommend Slackware. I was about to recommend Gentoo, but the compile times might be a bit much with a 120MHz machine... :wacko: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helmers Posted January 1, 2004 Share Posted January 1, 2004 No help on the tutorial, but I also agree that Slackware is a good choice. Or perhaps Debian. You should install a compiler, so that you can compile your own kernel. And a 2.6 kernel isn't any slower / larger than a 2.4 one. It just contains some less-tested features. So when you get it up and running, be sure to use the 2.6 series to squeeze some performance out of the machine. :) And with only 1 GB of space, you should decide if you really need GNOME/KDE. XFCE requires a lot of the GNOME libraries, so that one is pretty large too. Fluxbox is pretty and fast, and there are plenty of good text editors out there, as well as "links2 -g" for really simple web browsing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argonaut Posted January 1, 2004 Share Posted January 1, 2004 Yeah, like roughly a week.... although you could cross compile it with dcc on another machine and then pass it over... that way you would have a really optimised system, a must when you cannot spare a single cpu cycle! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts