Hi, I have a laptop running Win98 with 256MB of RAM and a 12GB HD. I need to take photos off the HD but can only use a 256mb USB thumb drive to remove a small batch of photos at a time since newer, larger thumb drives that I own don't work.

So, I was wondering if someone could definitively point me to a small distro that will do two things: 1. Enable the use of a larger thumb drive and 2. Make the laptop run smoothly. I need internet access, VLC and maybe Libreoffice or something similar to these applications. The laptop will be used in school with special needs pupils once I can clear it of my photos/docs and can remove Win98. Thanks.

Hello and welcome to LQ.

Kind of a lot of answers for you really.

Are you saying that can boot to a usb drive or not?

If you are saying that some older usb drive does boot then why can't you boot to it and then insert a different larger usb to move data off.

Issue here may be ram too. Some distro's won't work. Many of the recovery and minimal will indeed work. Plenty of choice that may work.


Now, as to run smoothly we can't say. It seems rather old. DSL linux, puppy, antix, slitaz, slacko and a few others are made to work on limited resource. They will not work well at all on USB 1.1.

I have liked various Knoppix distro's over the years. A 3.x version may work off cd just fine to ram. Maybe.



You may be able to boot a minimal distro to ram then run pretty good.

Might be able to pxe /gpxe/ipxe to a distro.

You are pushing it for 256MB of ram. But AntiX 13.2 comes with what you are asking for. Fits on CD. Will give internet access with a ethernet cable. For a better experience. Throw another 256 MB of ram in it, It is a live cd so files can be pulled off of 98. Pick F4 at the grub screen and select "mount=all"

My low spec IBM A22M laptop when I ran it, on it. I have moved up to better gear since. then.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6JUwp8A-np0/maxresdefault.jpg

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/antix-m11/antix-13.2/#x86

AntiX suggested should be good and would be the first thing I would try. Other possibilities that should work are Slitaz, TinyCore or Nanolinux. The last three are very minimal installs. You can put any of them on a CD and boot from it to copy files to your thumb drive without installing or possibly install them. Might have problems due to the age of the hardware.

The operating system you put on it will not make it run smoothly if the hardware isn't adequate. What is the cpu on this machine?

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to respond. I tried AntiX and then Knoppix but had no luck. Success was had with Puppy Linux though as I was able to offload bunches of photos and documents off the laptop with a larger USB drive.

Yea! Thanks for the update and solution.