I have an old pentium 1 computer 166 Mhz, with 16 MB RAM, 1,7 GB HD, S3 trio 64 2mb vga card. I'd like to install linux on it as experiment.
Which distro do I have to choose?

I also want to install X and an office suite. The computer has no internet.
Which window manager you suggest?
How do I burn everything on a CD? Can I put everything on the same CD?

Do you have other tips (kernel, things I don't have to install...)

Or is it impossible to run Linux in a reasonable way?

I would say you're in luck with TONS of Linux distro's.

Slackware will run on it.
http://www.slackware.com/install/sysreq.php

In fact, I would install Slackware on it.

Your other options are endless. You might wanna check out www.distrowatch.com and read up on all the distro's. You could also read trickykid's thread on "How to pick a distribution for youself " here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=20451



Oh......also, welcome to LinuxQuestions.org. Glad to have ya!

Peace,
Whitehat

Should I install Slackware 9.1 or do I have to look after an older version?
And will I be able to run fluxbox with my 16 MB RAM?
Which office suite can I use?

Consider deli linux - http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=deli

I would try Slackware 4.0

it should run... the office suite, hmm I don't know they're all quite tough on memory. Maybee you could try finding some more RAM, I expect that can't be to hard (and it is cheap anyway), it would seriously speed up the thing ...

Fluxbox can run at 640x480@16bits on a 16MB machine under slack 8,1

800x600@16bits was too hungry, X couldn't do it .... even though it is only 937.5KB for that. I slashed back as much as I could but to no avail, maybe an earlier version would be a bit lighter.

Try http://lin-on-win.serverbob.org ive emailed him and he says he has a SLOWER pc than you and is running fluxbox and abiword!!!!!!

The site seams very basic, but he assures me it will be better in a week or two.

Try it, i will!!

I think on a pc this slow, you'd better run vector or slack instead of first running windoze and on top of that Linux (it is even based on slackware!)... it just has to slow things down, and then I didn't mention the fact that you only have 16Mb RAM.

No don't do something like this, take vector or slack, but there is no point in running Linux on top of Linux on a pc like that...

The general idea is that you can use it on the same partition as windoze, as it uses the fat32 filesystem and umsdos.

You dont use them at the same time, running windoze is bad enough, never mind with 16meg ram!!

Ok, that was a slight misunderstanding, but then I still do not understand why you install on a windoze partition? He doesn't need windoze, since it is just a pc to experiment on, so not his main machine... And apart from that, fat32 is a pretty crappy operating system so wouldn't it be better if just had linux?

My first Linux distro, Slackware 2.3, ran on a Micron P100 desktop system with a 2.1 GB disk and 16 MB of memory. That version of Slackware used fvwm as the window manager. You could use something like that. It'd be OK and even desirable to use a newer version of Slackware, as long as you steer clear of using a heavy desktop - KDE and GNOME are much too heavy for older systems, but fvwm, Fluxbox, IceWM, Blackbox, or XFCE might work well for you.

The Debian distributions are also able to work with quite a wide range of systems. You may even want to try a Live CD implementation, such as Feather Linux, Morphix, or some of the other light Live CDs.

This is taken from the zipslack page at slakware

The hardware required to run ZipSlack does not differ that much from the full Slackware Linux distribution. Below is the minimum hardware you need in order to run ZipSlack.

386 processor
16 megabytes of RAM
100 megabytes of hard disk space on a FAT or FAT32 filesystem
NOTE: The additional RAM is needed to compensate for the generic kernel included in ZipSlack. There is an addon for ZipSlack which installs an 8 MB swap file in the \LINUX directory. You must have this addon if you want to boot ZipSlack on a system with less than 8 MB of RAM.


i think that shows even slackware will run fine, with x as well

LOL i have a Pentium 1 with MMX Technology @ 200Mhx with a MAX of 160MB RAM (SIMM) or 192 MB RAM (SIMM) and with a 6.2 Seagates HDD and with a ATi Rage Pro 128 PCI (dont know the MB of my vard yet) with extra cache (more chips on it and if you want i can take a pic and show you what i mean) PCI 10/100 t-BASE Ethernet Adapter and ISA Sound Blaster! oh and i monted a super fan on the CPU not to burn up if i can overclock it and a fan that take the air from outside directly shooting on my CPU and lol a 100W PSU.

In total i have 6 SIMM Slots on my board but i dont the make of it but my chips on it says SiS all around

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/search.php

^^^ That's the best distro ive found. It distributes the best information for any distro on the net.