I have tried to install linux on the above using the 4mb laptop howto.

I cannot get MuLinux to boot....*however*, I managed to get Small Linux to boot and create the needed partitions and then put the Small Linux Root disk on Hdrive and use that as Root to free up the floppy.

My question:
I wish to install Suse...but Suse tries to uncompress the kernel image (whether from HD or floppy) thereby hanging (4mb). The distro example given is Slackware.

Does Slackware use an uncompressed kernel, so I can just copy the files to the HD and then boot from it?(using the boot disk to point to the HD as the root image) or have I missed something?

Luke

It definitely can be done. I just picked up an old 486 Compac laptop for a song and installed Slackware 3.4 on it. I can't take the credit myself - there is an excellent resource out there called Linux for Laptops. The reason Slackware 3.4 works so well is that it's completely on floppies, and it installs with very low memory requirements. My laptop has 8 megs ram, but I remember a README file that said if you want to install Slack 3.4 on a computer with 4 megs you have to decompress the "root" floppy (the second floppy) so it doesn't take up a lot of ram when loading. The normal root floppy is all in gzipped form. But if you gunzip the file ahead of time on another computer it should work.


I really like this little laptop. And Vi is so much better for reading E-text books than Dos 6.2. In WordPerfect reading a large E-text is just about impossible.

Hope this helps,

Harry