Jeffrey

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i was going to put linux on one of my 386's. i put the installation boot disk in and it started up fine, then it said something about it not being able to load(all i can rember was it made a big deal about it being a 386).

do you need to make a special boot disk or something for a 386?

i'm sorry. its been a few days before i could ask you and i forgot the message. i'll try it again later and copy down the actual message.

crabboy

This may be a good question for the Distributions...

What distro are you trying to install on the 386. Good luck trying Mandrake or even Redhat. (I don't want to hear from the redhaters on 386's) My experience with both those distros where they were very heavy on the apps (disk space) and geared for mostly for X support.

I have had slackware running on a 386 (over 6 years ago) and more recently (~2 years ago) on a 486 DX2. Slackware is a good install if you don't need any of the fancy stuff and you can really trim down your installation size. Unlike Mandrake, where I tried twice to NOT install X and it still stuck it on the drive.

There are a few good distros that will work well on a 386, you just have to try them out. There have been a couple discussions on small installs on this board, try a search.

Also try http://www.linux.org and go to distributions.

Gary

KevinJ

I guess that's my first question.... What are you going to do with the box?

Virtually any distro can be stripped down to run on this system. The amount of RAM may be more limiting than the processor speed. It will require extensive knowledge of the package dependencies and you will have to install in expert mode. I take that back.. you may have some trouble with Mandrake(compiled for Pentium?), Corel, Caldera and some of those. But Redhat, Slackware, and Debian should all work with some effort. If you don't have 16MB of RAM and you are going to do anything more than make a router... I wouldn't waste my time.

KevinJ

You might want to check out these "small" linux's:

http://www.slackware.com/zipslack/

http://www.tinylinux.org

http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut/

http://pygmy.penguin.cz/

And if you are a gluton for punishment:

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Jeffrey

the 386 im using is a compaq with 4 megs of ram, and 127 mb of hd space (i know all about the amount of space needed, i just wanted to see if the install program working.)

i used a mandrake boot disk(i agree about mandrake being a little too hasty on installing x stuff)

i think i'll try slackware like you said.

crabboy

With only 4 megs of ram, you might have trouble installing slackware. Use the lowmem.i boot disk image. Take a look at the slackware "low memory" tips document.

Good Luck

ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackwar...ent/LOWMEM.TXT

DGTL_Magician

Debian works also fine, as long as you use the LOWMEMRD.IMG file as a boot disk. Then make copies of the install disk, and your 386 works FINE!