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I've got this 486/66mhz PC with 16 meg of memory. I was running an old version of FreeBSD on it. So I burned a CD of Redhat Linux 7.1 and was unable to install it because the install program needs 32meg memory to run. The question I have is which Linux is the best or the latest version I can run on this machine? How about install requirements of other Linux vendors? Or is there an alternate mechanism of installing newer versions of Redhat? Oh yeah the box cannot boot from floppy or CD, so I need a way to install direct to the D drive from either BSD or DOS 6.1 (it's dual boot on drive C now). ;-)





(Comment added by Tyche on Sat Aug 30 1:18:44 2003)

Also I need a minimal distro under 380 megabytes of disk space.

The Red Hat Linux installation tool also runs in a text mode, which shouldn't give you any problems with your system specs. It appears you're allowing it to auotmatically start the graphical install - type 'text' at the boot: prompt to begin the text install.

During the installation, you'll have the option to select which installation method (network, http, CD-ROM) you want to use. The easiest and quickest is CD-ROM, though not all drives can be detected reliably. Even if you're unable to boot from it, most ATAPI drives will be detected just fine. For the other installation methods, see the Red Hat Linux 7.1 Installation Guide.

Depending on what you want to do with your machine, you might want to look at some of these mini-distributions:
Linux Directory

Good luck!

-Neros

What is wrong with leaving unix?

Don't go redhat, they have a exploit/vuln every week almost.

Get any of the BSD's. Most have text based installs anyways. They run the best and have less problems with scriptkiddies who want to poke at Linux/Unix os's for fun.

If your going to run a linux os run Mandrake if you're new.

*CENSORED* SCO!

-Famine

486? You don't want any of the 'big' ones, RH, Mandrake, SuSE (pun intended.) I'd look into possibly knoppix, Libranet, Slackware or Debian, but my primary suggestion is Gentoo due to its flexibility and minimal base configuration (and as far as I know, you should be able to install it from a partition.) This is of course if you really want to move away from BSD -I see nothing wrong with FreeBSD?

You might also want to go with one of the non-vanilla 2.4 kernel braches (maybe gs-sources in case of Gentoo) to find maximal support for your hardware (I run lt-2.6-test4 myself.)

Now, I must say I'm interested in understanding why you can't boot from a floppy? CD I understand for an old system like that but a floppy drive should be standard. Even the 386 I have non-bio-degrading somewhere in the back room can be set to boot a floppy (and if I recall correctly that is the default setting in the BIOS.) If you're just having problems with it someone here might be able to help.

E

P.S. Got your mail, thanks. qmail is down again for reinstall and I don't use webmail.

I would go with either Gentoo or BSD if you can actully install Gentoo :P

*CENSORED* SCO!

-Famine

Thanks all. I ripped a floppy drive out of another machine this weekend and was able to do a network installation of Redhat 6.2 from it with no problems. I had more than enough room on the drive as I managed to copy the old partitions onto a 5 gig one and get the ancient thing to work with EZ-Bios to partition it for all three OS's, FreeBSD, Linux and Win95. I was also able to share a UMSDOS partition between all three which is very handy. Why? It's a test box for building compatible software. And playing with the OSs as well. One can never have enough OSs around. ;-)