Operating systems for really, really old computers

[darrelljon]

Puppy Linux 3
EcoPup
MeanPup
Puppy 214R
Optimized
Regression

[muggins]

Which modern/lightweight distros would work on a computer with an AMD K5 processor and 128 mb of ram?
It's for my dad who is in his eighties and not computer savy, so it would also have to be easy to use as well.

[Lord Illidan]

Which modern/lightweight distros would work on a computer with an AMD K5 processor and 128 mb of ram?

Damn Small Linux

[darrelljon]

Which modern/lightweight distros would work on a computer with an AMD K5 processor and 128 mb of ram?

Any of the ones in the original post. Personally if you're new to Linux, I'd recommend Puppy Linux or a derivative.

[DJiNN]

The 6.5 version of antiX is also light and works on K5/6 processors, and has a good collection of software. It's made to work well on low spec machines.

[K.Mandla]

There's an i586 version of Crux, but you have to be particularly Linux-savvy to set it up. Runs wicked fast though.

[mr.farenheit]

minix

[digger95]

You've got several Slackware-based systems on there, but I don't see any mention of the options Slackware itself gives you. First, there's zipslack, which fits on a 100MB zip drive or a FAT partition. And, starting with 12.0 Slackware has USB and PXE installation instructions... Plus, you can just install Slackware and install a very lean set of programs. It takes a little choosing, but I've installed it with basically X and Fluxbox with a half-dozen main programs -- firefox, etc. -- on an ancient AMD K6-2 laptop. It ran very well with that, considering.

Yeah I don't know why Slackware didn't make the cut. It is perhaps one of the leanest distros out there and can run on a 486 with as little as 16MB of RAM (32MB recommended). You can even install from floppy if necessary, though I've never attempted it. Two cd's give you a full install.

[sepultura]

Since we're talking tiny OSes (Contiki and the likes) let me pitch in with two of them I've worked on and used, though strictly speaking they're not for PC's at all.

1. FreeRTOS: http://www.freertos.org/
2. eCos: http://ecos.sourceware.org/

FreeRTOS is a really neat embedded real time OS which runs on a wide range of microcontrollers mostly in the ARM range. I've used it with a Cortex M3, an NXP ARM7 (LPC2148 if I am not mistaken) among others. Comes with a TCP/IP stack, basic scheduler and IO.

Best of all, it integrates very nicely with the eclipse IDE with the GnuARM or Winarm compiler tools and the insight debugger. Throw in the philips flash utility and you've got an allround microcontroller dev environment. Cool.

[volkswagner]

Well I am a gluten for learning with Linux. After a trip to a local recycle station, I am a owner of one Satellite 420cds. The machine has 16meg ram. The info on the web says they were shipped with 100-120mhz processors. The 1gig HD is cleaned (no os). The unit has a cd rom but bios does not boot to cd.

I have a desktop with floppy drive to mess with. The salvage yard has more units some with floppy drives. These drives interchange so I can't run both drives at the same time.

I have toyed with the DSL floppy boot image to see if I could get my desktop to boot with it. I don't want to spend another 40bucks for the second lappy with the floppy. Hope I am being clear.

I could not get the desktop to boot via the floppy. I tried several floppies all with the same problem. After the kernel loads, I get the limited shell response. Even with the DSL disk in CD drive at the same time.

So I guess I had several bad floppies or I am doing something wrong.

My question is this. Should I install a small os to the HD, then get it to boot the new os with cd rom support? Then try an os install via the cdrom. The laptop is without modem, ethernet, or usb.

What would be my best solution. This will most likely be a toy. Possible some kids games??? If I can get a cheap ethernet pcmcia card may be able to set up as a basic server?

What road shall I take to get any os onto the HD, provided I get a floppy drive? Then swap it out with the CD rom?

I think the salvage yard has 3 more machines. One may have as much as 48meg ram, wahoo!

Was forty bucks way too much? Battery holds a charge!