Hello. My problem is, that im stuck up on exchange with an old Laptop.
To be preciese an Acer Extensa 503T (300Mhrz Pentium 1 MMX, 32 MB RAM, 4 Gig HDD, WinME*gr*). I'd like to intstall Linux, because I've realy apreciated using it on my "real" PC. However my knowledge of Linux Systems is as much as "Press Enter to start installing Proces".

I tried to intall what I usualy used (Fedora Core 2) but it failed due to insufficient RAM. (Of course.)
Now I'm looking for an "old" Linux distribiution (preferable Graphic mode included) that matches with my resources.
Due to the fact, that I am not good at Linux I failed to find something like this on the internet by myselfe.
Also the installation proces should be as easy as possible.
This sounds quite hard...

I'd realy apriciate any help you could give me.

Thanks
das_Schaf

Ah, and one more thing:
'Cause my computer is unable to write CDs the Packages mustn't be larger than 256 MB to fit on my memorystick.

Try knoppix or even smaller tty linux please see www.inux.org Distros=minimalist

Try some muLinux http://mulinux.sunsite.dk/ or h3knix http://vietnow.net:81/h3k/h3knix.html or http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut/ and so on ... I have the same problem but "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For ...." The problem is that small linuxes are not so easy to install like BIG distros ... maybe for this are small

Try ZipSlack. It probably doesn't come with a graphical environment but you can easily add on X server and say, fluxbox..

Have Amigo (minimalist Slackware-based Linux similar to ZipSlack) running on my Extensa 575CD laptop.

See Amigo LQ forum and http://www.amigolinux.org for info.

-nycace36

Two possibilties:

Damn Small Linux
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

and DeliLinux
http://delilinux.berlios.de/

Deli really runs well on the old stuff - I've got it running on a Toshiba Libretto Pentium 75 with 32Mb of RAM using fluxbox and am very happy with it. If you are new to Linux it may be a little tough but it IS good on the old computers.

O.F.

Something even lower-end than DeliLinux for <16MB RAM laptops w/o CD drives is BasicLinux. Can run from floppy disks or in as little as 3MB RAM !
.
See http://basiclinux.com.ru/ for info and BL3 downloads.

A standard recommendation as well, for slow/low-RAM laptops, is to activate a swap partition on the hard drive (imperative on old distro versions for 8MB RAM or less!)
Good rule-of-thumb is to double the RAM-size for swap partition.

When any bootable Linux gives CLI (=Command Line Interface) after superuser/root login, something like this 1-2-3 to make a swap partition :
1) 'fdisk /dev/hd?' where hd is ide hard drive and ? is a,b,c, or d ;
choose n option to create new partition, then t option and partition # (note this #) ;
make swap partition type 82 and then enter w to write partitioning

2) type 'mkswap -c /dev/hd?#' to format and check swap partition

3) type 'swapon /dev/hd?#' to activate swap partition while still logged in as superuser/root ;

There, you now have a little extra resources to get Linux going on a low-end laptop!