I have two old powerbooks, a 1400cs/166 and a 3400c/180. I would love to install linux on them. One has a floppy drive, and the other a cd-rom drive. Both have 16Mb of ram. The first one has a clock speed of 166Mhz and the latter is 180Mhz. Here are more specs.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl...400cs_166.html
http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl...3400c_180.html
I am looking for some small lightweight PPC distros (one floppy one cd-rom)that will run reasonably well on here. Text-only does not bother me. Some lightweight windowmanager would be great. I have heard that the 2.4 kernel would be ideal for this hardware. I am going to try debian tomorrow, but I think it will be a little slow. I am also thinking a BSD might be good too. Thanks!

Here is a list of PPC based distros from distrowatch.org

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?ca...&status=Active

I'm sure any of these can be configured to be very minimal. Browse some of those distro pages and pick one you like.

I was very happy with Yellowdog last time I used it. And, yes just pick a distro you like and do a minimal install. The kernel is pretty small in all of them, its the extra stuff that takes all the room.

What are the smallest partition sizes you can get by with for ydl 6.0...

I can devote about 5 gigs to ydl...

Danke

I'd say Slackintosh (ok, I'm biased), unfortunately noone ever write a tutorial for old world booting, do you want to help us?
It is possible to boot and run Slackintosh on oldworlds (see http://www.freelists.org/archives/sl.../msg00000.html and http://www.freelists.org/archives/sl.../msg00024.html ) but it requires some manual work and (missing) documentation.
If you want to take this journey, we'll really appreciate your help

the one with the cd-rom broke :-(
so i cant try slackintosh
so all i use the remaining one for now is playing marathon (great series)

hi,

I have an old PC. 124 MB RAM and P2 processor. PCBSD will not install on it.

Error message: 'Running out of space - going nowhere with my init[ ] - rebooting now.

FreeBSD will install but it will not recognise the USB.

The best small distros I have are Vector Linux, Astrumini and DSL.

I'm afraid you have the wrong thread.

But anyway, PCBSD won't run very well on that, it's requirements are too high.
I can give you a recommendation if you tell me what you want to do with this box.