Toshiba Portege 3490CT ubuntu install?

[bobdutica]

I have a Toshiba Portege 3490CT (currently running Windows 2000), I believe it was manufactured in 2001.
It has 256 megabytes memory(the maximum the machine can handle) and a 20 GB hard disk.
I obtained ubuntu-12.04.4-alternate-i386-iso file and I attempted to burn it to a CD to use for installation. Unfortunately, it is too large to burn to a regular CD.
My Portege has a plug-in "Multi-Media Port Replicator" which has a regular CD drive, a USB (version 1) port and a network port.
The Portege laptop has one USB(version 1) port, but it is NOT ABLE to boot from USB.
It can boot from a regular CD or from a Network. I do not know how to boot it from a network.

Is this laptop too old (too little RAM? too little hard disk space?) to install ubuntu?
How can I get around the problem of the ubuntu-12.04.4-alternate-i386-iso file being too big to burn to a regular CD?

[ajgreeny]

Is this laptop too old (too little RAM? too little hard disk space?) to install ubuntu?
How can I get around the problem of the ubuntu-12.04.4-alternate-i386-iso file being too big to burn to a regular CD?
Yes, I'm afraid you won't get Ubuntu to run on that machine, and I think any other of the ubuntu family, eg Lubuntu, will also run sooooo slooooowly as to be almost unusable.

I suggest you have a look at something much smaller, but still surprisingly usable such as DamnSmallLinux or Puppy. I have little to no experience of DSL but have used Puppy running from both a CD and USB.

Have a look at the pages for both at distrowatch which may give you more useful info to help you decide for yourself.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

[mörgæs]

It doesn't really matter if you get a light operative system to run or not. The problem is the applications. Most of the world's web contents (Google+, Facebook, Youtube, news sites...) is served in heavyweight web sites, putting quite a big load on the browser and in turn on the hardware.

I wouldn't recommend Damn Small Linux. It has been dormant for several years and is only slowly getting up to speed.

If you want to play with the old Toshiba you should do it as a learning experiement only. It will not be a computer suitable for normal usage.