[NCLUG] linux for old 95 machine?

[Michael Riversong]

Have installed Linux on several donated older machines since 2001.  Here are a few bits of knowledge:

Generally you need an older Linux for an older machine.  With only 64 MB of RAM, the limitations are severe.  Stuff in whatever extra memory you can!  Win 95 & 98 don't need much RAM, but almost everything decent does.  Then, there's the problem of using the Internet.  Some of the older distributions, like Ubuntu 5, assume that you're connecting through a server and don't actually have Internet access in the distribution.

With 64 MB RAM, the only distributions that worked consistently were Corel and Slackware.  Sometimes Xandros 2.0 (the successor to Corel) could be forced to work.  That family has about the best graphics in the Linux world.

Managed to get the older version of Debian running (2 generations back), but never tried to access the Internet with it.

Also found SuSe 7.2 and 7.3 worked fairly well.  Again, didn't try the Internet with those.

Fedora Core 1.0 worked but only with 128 MB RAM.  Its Internet setup was excellent!

-----Original Message-----
>From: Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com>
>Sent: Dec 26, 2009 6:58 PM
>To: Northern Colorado Linux Users Group <nclug at lists.nclug.org>
>Subject: Re: [NCLUG] linux for old 95 machine?
>
>On Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 04:41:33PM -0700, Brennen Bearnes wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Degutan White <degutan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > The in-laws have wireless and a win95 machine with 64mb ram and one
>> > 2gig HD and a 1gig HD.   Any recommendations for them?   (besides buy
>> > a new computer from system76)
>> ...
>> 
>> > I've only used ubuntu, and don't have any familiarity with Puppy or
>> > DSL.    Is DSL my only real bet?
>> 
>> While I'm sure you could pick up better hardware for the next thing to
>> free, I have a machine of roughly that vintage doing just fine on a
>> relatively recent Debian.
>
>Keeping in mind that I haven't really installed Debian on any of my
>computers in the last three years . . . I think vanilla Debian should be
>fine for most purposes on older hardware.  As long as you stick to a
>pretty minimal install, and add only the packages you need (maybe use
>something like Fluxbox for the GUI), it should work fine in under a gig
>of hard drive space.  I've run a slim but quite capable Debian system
>with the full install, including all my everyday applications, fitting
>into less than 500MB easily.  Actually, I think that included my data
>too, but then most of my data is text files.  Plain text can pack into
>very small spaces, without even bothering to use any compression.
>
>One major change since those days is the weight of Mozilla applications,
>though.  Firefox alone is a huge inflation in storage and memory resource
>consumption, so while I was able to include Firebird (pre-1.0 Firefox)
>into that small bit of storage space at the time, you might want to find
>something lighter than Firefox to use now.
>
>-- 
>Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]


Michael Riversong

Cheyenne, Wyoming

Beautiful Music for the whole universe!

http://home.earthlink.net/~mriversong