I have seen a lot of small linux distros but i need something smaller. I have an old computer with 256mb hard drive space, no cd rom, crappy processor and the important part only 4MB ram. All the small linux distros i have seen require at least 8 and when i tried to install one it kept freezing after the first disc.
I dont want something that is going to run off the floppy disc either, i want something i can put on the hard drive and allow me to do basic command (I just want to play with linux). any help would be appreciated

Linux Online Distro List

I recommend Grey Cat Linux.

I think BasicLinux can work on 4 - I had 8 on the one I tried but I seem to recall 4 could be done. And I think you can even get a variant of ZipSlack that will go on 4. There are others but those are the first two that spring to mind.

I think this is an old list but you could try here

Oh - just had a thought about the freezing part - you should get an error message but do you have a 386/486SX? I'm kinda confused because I thought the Linux kernel could emulate the missing math-coprocessor but that's why I have to use BL1.8 instead of 2.3 - got a 486SX and 1.8 is the only line that will work with an SX.

What is BL1.8? 2.3? i think i do got a 486 but i dont think its an SX its been awhile since i opened it but i think it is a DX, i could be wrong

BL=BasicLinux. The 1x series, at 1.8, is for SXs and the 2x series, at 2.3, is for DXs and up. If it's a 486DX it must not be a coprocessor problem. I mean, like I say, it isn't usually, but it would be if you tried to install 2.3 on a 386SX. It just aborts the boot process, exiting with an error message. But other distros may just abort silently, leaving you wondering.

Mind you, I don't think BasicLinux is all that great - it uses busybox, which is a bunch of symlinks to an executable that kind of emulates most of what would be your /bin directory and a lot of switches are missing. But it gets a 102 meg 25 MHz 486SX running, so I can't really complain, either. (Maybe I should say it *is* great, given the constraints, which suck.) Plus, you can download some old Slackpacks, usually without much trouble.

Oh, and I should say that Basic *is* a floppy distro but you can download bas2hd.zip and transfer it to your hard drive so that it's a real distro. My memory's getting fuzzy. I think it needs DOS to get started. If you don't have an old DOS laying around, try FreeDOS. That's a DOS-compatible open source system. Then, after BL's on the hard drive, just delete FreeDOS if you want.

Or maybe somebody else knows something simpler and better.