Hello,

If you can find another hard drive, such as a 2GB unit, put that in there and make a dual-boot system. Assuming the machine is entirely from the era, be aware:

* Big hard drives over 2GB may not be recognized. If it is old enough, something over 512 might not be recognized either. They may work, but only the first X of data.

* Your machine probably has at most 16 MB RAM unless you did a lot of expensive upgrading in the day. Today's linux wiill be hard pressed to fit into that. RedHat 7 would have a hard time with it. I believe RH 7 wants 24 MB, or 32MB.

* CPU is 286? 386? 386 SX? 486? If the CD's that are made with kernals built for the pentium chips are made, they may have micro code inside them that the older chops cannot handle.

I would find a copy of Redhat 6.2 around, and start there. You can still find places to download it.

Christian

it really doesnt matter about disk space though. the linux distros i am talking about are just run off the cd. I am sure if you calculations about my ram are right than it will not be able to run it. I will just have to test it out and see.

If you can run Windows 95, you can run Linux. Note the statement says "can run Linux" not "can run Linux well"

You may want to acquire a hard drive for the machine, and possibly play with it. I think Slackware may be the best "modern" linux to put on there, as it's all user-configured.

yeah slackware was another choose but i had started to download slax live cd and the size(120 megs or so) is really small so i thought that would be a good choose i also thought of using this really old linux that i found called basic linux that looks sort of like the pre windows days.

yeah it doesnt matter the cd drive is borken and so old that it would not be able to run the cd-r i burnt of the SuSE live eval cd. All it can run is basic linux which runs off of two floppy disks.

Hello,

Save yourself some grief and go get a different CD-ROM drive for the computer. Finding Linux on floppy will be difficult... those things are usually "made". There may be a used computer place around where you live that may have slower CD-ROMS used for sale -- something like $10 - $20. Heck, a lot of places that I have worked have given the 1x 2x 4x units away!

Christian

Oh thanks for the advice kc0arf but i really dont think that i am going to put it on that machine i have a better computer that i am running now the only reason i dont want to put linux on it is because it is the family computer and my little sister b!tc#es at me every time I do something to it and istalling another os on the pc (even with dual boot) is just the sort of thing that would get her pissed at me.

Your solution now? Get your own PC.

Having your own PC's a good thing. That way, if you mess it up, no one but you knows or cares.

yeah its kinda hard to get the money when no one will hire anybody under 16, but soon my older brother is getting a better computer and giving his old one (which he got this year) to my sister. So then the main pc is all mine