I'm trying to do a minimal install of SuSE 9.0 on a very old PC that currently only runs Win95 and DOS. (It's so old that DOS seems to be the PC's OS of choice)
It can boot from CD (which is a miracle) and I can get the YaST installer to load in text mode, but every time I try to install, it says that there isn't enough memory, and asks me to give it a swap partition. The only way I know to make a swap partition is with Linux, and obviously, I can't do that.
Please help...I can't figure out a way out of this paradox.

Ok, if you can't get SuSE's text based installer, I don't think that is the OS for that computer. If you are patient I would recommend Gentoo or else you could try zipslack

Hi,
This may be a round about way but you could give this a try...
download a knoppix iso from http://www.knoppix.org/
the nice thing about knoppix is you get a full linux distro which is smart enough to make a swap file for itself if it sees it does not have enough RAM to load.
Once booted into knoppix you can resize your windows partition and on the freed space make a linux swap partition with the mkswap command and then boot into your suse disk and point it at your brand new swap partition. To be honest though if you are very RAM limited then a new version of Suse may not be the way to go, it is tuned for newer machines with lots of RAM and Gigahertz processors, so using X and KDE will be unusably slow, I hope you like CLI cos it will be what you'll be using the most
Cheers

TheMusicGuy, what are the specs of the computer?

Depending on the specs TheMusicGuy could possibly run X with a lightweight WM like fluxbox.

I have a old Pentium 233 with 32 MB RAM notebook running Redhat 9, using X and Blackbox WM the GUI is just about usable, even firefox will run (just). But most of the time I dont bother to start X at all, it's just too slow...
Cheers

System specs:

Compaq Presario 4528
Pentium with MMX and 233 MHz
32 MB ram (type unknown)
apx. 3 GB hard drive space
GFX card so old the company isn't even listed...
DOS 7.1, if that matters
Windows 95

The reason I want to use SuSE is becuase I have it running smoothly on another PC and I know how to use it. Plus, comparing to other distro's, SuSE is very easy to install and use. (And I'm not just talking about KDE and Gnome)

I'm only planning on using the most basic windowing system/desktop that's available. (I think it's called mwv or something like that...).
It would probobly run well enough.

And, BTW, the text mode installer DOES run. It's just that whenever I choose "Install" from the menu it does some stuff and eventually comes to the conclusion that there isn't enough ram to "complete the operation" and then it goes back to the menu.

SuSE in this P-mmx will not give you the same good experience you have on the other pc. 32MB ins't enough for kde running smoothly, even with swap. If you swap in an old hd, things will run slow. I won't argue against suse, its my distro of choice, but 9.0 or above is a modern distro, for modern pc's. Exception is if you wanted to run only text mode, for a server, or something like this.
Try knoppix. It is very good at reviving old machines. If you can get more 32MB for this mmx, things improve a lot.

Last but not least: Take a look at this amazing resource: http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

Its a list of liveCD's and their homepages. Look for the myriad of knoppix sons: damnsmall linux, insert... One of them will fit your need.

Yes, I know kde wouldn't run, which is why I said I wasn't going to use it or even install it if I don't have to. I'm going to use MWM or whatever that window manager is called.

Darin:
You suggested I try Gentoo. From what I can tell from the website, it seems similar to SuSE, so how would it run any better? No offense, but could you please explain why I would want to use it? Is it good for old computers or something?

Yeh, sure I can explain. Gentoo compiles everything from source code for the exact computer it is on. This adds some speed but it will takes quite a few days, so you will have to be very patient and just let it work if you want Gentoo. One of the main reasons I recommend it though is that you choose basically everything you want on your system. You start out with a bare, minimal OS after installation. From there you add only the packages the you decide that you want. This saves space and speeds up the system. It is also very easy to install the wanted packages using Gentoo's portage. For example, to install mozilla
It will work without the -a but -a 'asks' whether to install after showing what it will install with dependencies. But like I said, you will have to be very patient because things like X.org will take days to compile.

...days? That's just on an old pc, right?
And what is X.org? I know what X is, and I know what .org means (on the net), but what is X.org and why is it worth spending several days just to compile it?

Oh, btw, the PC I'm talking about has no internet connection at all. (so no online updates or installs ) I just thought I should point that out...

Yeah, SuSE is too bloated for that machine.

Look into Slackware or Debian, Gentoo would be good, but the compile time might be a problem.

Aiight. SuSE's officially off my list then.

Zipslack is the smallest, and makes a good starting point and also runs on the same partition as Windows/DOS (which I actually have "installed" on my pc),
Slackware is the most unix-like and most likely to run on my stupid old pc,
Gentoo is the closest thing to SuSE that will run, and also has extreme custimizabillity,
Debian is...what exacly?

X is a system for having a GUI. The project behind it used to be XFree but they had some stuff distributions didn't like in their license so everyone dropped them and went to a fork of XFree called X.org. Debian is another distribution. It has a system similar to Gentoo's portage which allows you to install applications with something like
The difference is that Debian uses binaries, already compiled, packages so it saves time but might be less optimized. Debian also has less cutting-edge featues in the OS and programs but because of that it is very stable.

The machine you are talking about really isn't that bad. The CPU is pretty good, and you certainly have enough room on the drive, no need to go with ZipSlack based on storage constraints. I have run Slackware on much less than that machine, I assure you.

The only thing you may want to look into if you are going to want to run X, is some more RAM. It should be fairly cheap now, and there are websites that can tell you what type you need based on your laptop model number.

I'm not sure how Gentoo could be considered like SuSE, I would actually consider them on opposite ends of the spectrum. And Debian is a very popular distro, also very modular (it has been ported to many different platforms and hardware devices) and is probably best known for it's "apt" package management system, which is regarded by many users as proof that God exists and wants us to be happy.

By the way, "Vector Linux" is a distro designed for older hardware and based on Slackware, you might want to look into that as well.

Great quote I think that applies to most decent package management systems like portage also.