Re: Installing Linux on an old 486 compaq laptop

[Matt Drew <mdrew redhat com>]

On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, Marie-Thérèse Lorentzen wrote:

> Hi!
> A friend's 16 year-old would like to put his old 486 Compaq laptop (with
> only has 80 MB on it's hard drive, no CD-ROM and 4MB RAM) back into use
> again. He's never tried Linux and would like to try it on the laptop.
> Has anyone had any luck installing Linux on an older Compaq laptop? Does
> anyone have any suggestions as to which version Linux he should use?
> Where can it be found? Any ideas as to what kind of problems he could
> run into?
> Any help would be greatly appreciated!
> Thanks!

This would be very tough, and probably very frustrating if he is new to
Linux.  The Red Hat installer will not work (the minimum install is 150MB
or so, I forget the exact number).  I think his best shot would be a
Linux-from-Scratch installation (see www.linuxdoc.org), but even that on a
system that limited would be difficult.  Maybe an older Debian minimal
install?  It isn't actually the processor that is the problem -- it is the
memory and especially the hard drive.  It is possible, but it would take
quite a bit of effort.

Matt

-- 
Matt Drew
Red Hat Consumer Services (Web Support)