Member Avatar for jbennet

Ok i have a 486DX something (around 20-50mhz) with 10mb ish of RAM and about 0.5 gigs of HDD space. I would like X if possible. Can anyone reccomend any distros?

P.S I will need boot floppies - it has no NIC either

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by elephantrange

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Short summary and practical plan for a 486 with ~10 MB RAM and ~0.5 GB disk:

With only ~10 MB of RAM a full X desktop will be very slow (and often impossible) — a text-only install or extremely tiny GUI is a more realistic target. Swap on the small disk can help, but expect paging to be painfully slow. Given the lack of a network interface, focus on a floppy/CD-based installer or installing by moving the drive to another PC.

Notes tied to the thread: and others pointed you toward floppy-focused tiny installs; mentioned archived Debian releases (but the classic Debian installer often needs more memory, as discovered); correctly flagged BasicLinux as a practical tiny option if you want an optional very small X.

Concrete, low-effort ways to get media onto that machine (pick one):

  • Borrow a PC with a floppy, or buy a cheap USB floppy to write images on your XP box, then boot the 486 from its own floppy. Many USB floppies will let you create standard 1.44MB disks on Windows.
  • Remove the 486’s hard drive, attach it to another computer (IDE cable or IDE-USB adapter), install/copy the minimal system there, reinstall the drive in the 486 and fix the bootloader.
  • If the 486 has a CD-ROM and can boot it, make a small boot floppy that loads CD drivers and then install from a burned CD.
  • As a last-ditch, transfer via serial/null-modem and use a tiny boot floppy with kermit/ppp to pull a root image (advanced).

Example command to write an image from a Linux box to a floppy (adjust device name):

dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k

On Windows use a small raw-write tool (RawWrite/WinImage or similar) to write .img files to A:.

Practical tips: create a tiny root (keep / under ~200–300 MB), give a small swap (16–32 MB), avoid modern heavyweight packages, and test with console-only tools first. If you need help with a specific image or the disk-transfer steps, mention which hardware (floppy/CD present, IDE/drive model) and someone can give step-by-step commands.

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Member Avatar for pty

maybe blueflops ?

Member Avatar for jbennet

yeah im gonna have a look at that. Maybe minix?

Member Avatar for jbennet

ah, problem. i cant make the disks as my xp machine has no floppy drive

Member Avatar for John A

I hate the name of this Linux, so I've never tried it, but from what I've heard, it's pretty good:
www.damnsmalllinux.org/

i cant make the disks as my xp machine has no floppy drive

Uh, oh.... what are you going to do? Maybe a friend has a computer you can use to make a boot floppy?

Member Avatar for jbennet

im impressd but i dont think ive got enough ram for x - anyone know if i can get isos and flopp images of say, debian potato or redhat 4 anymore? - security isnt an issue as the machine has never seen the net

Member Avatar for jbennet

i know you can download rh 6.2 but 1 would be better. anyonme know anywhere?

Member Avatar for John A

anyone know if i can get isos and flopp images of say, debian potato or redhat 4 anymore?

Probably best to go with Debian.

Member Avatar for jbennet

no the stupid installer needs 24mb
may try freebsd 2.2 or minix

Member Avatar for likaincu

i have also the your problem
i have hp vectra pc to install freebsd , it runs ok
if you have more question you can add my msn to chat
about bsd

Member Avatar for elephantrange

BasicLinux 3.5

This is an excellent small distro that should suit what you describe. It is compatible with early Slackware, and has JWM for an optional X.

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