I have been playing around with computers for a while now.

Just before discovering Linux was a far better OS, xxxxxx98 was everywhere.

I use to install it on some very old computers, even exotic ones without many troubles.

How many of you have Linux loaded on old computers ?

Did you get yourself in troubles doing it ?

What distro are you using and for what purpose are you using it ?

Thanks.

I like DamnSmall Linux

Its TOO fast and its ONLY 47MB!!!

I've got mandrake 8.2 running on an old pentium pro and it works fine. ( note that this machine is used offline only) I also like peanut linux for the eye candy and this also ran but had some problems with hardware issues. I started with red hat 7.2 when I found out that most modern distros would not fit on the hard drive. (1 gig).
Problems, yes. This machine refuses to boot anything running isolinux, solution smart boot manager.
This machine is not really used for anything right now, other than my amusement. Althought if it had to it could be used for small office type stuff. The lack of hard drive space and the fact that it has no cd burner is what is keeping this machine from being used.
This machine is at a place where I do volunteer work. If I had it at home it would be a router.

I am running an OLD Pentium S 150 with 16Mb RAM. Slackware 9.1 REALLY does the job, even for this old machine! I would suggest that everyone use it..It may not be as secure as say FreeBSD, but it is an excellent operating system who stays ontop of security updates.

I've got Red Hat 7.2 on a Compaq Deskpro 5100 running 100MHz with a 1.1Gb HDD and originally 40mb of RAM. I upgraded to 96mb RAM and the machine is much more responsive. I even have KDE going. Last night I configured the dialup and downloaded the Opera browser.

I will try to install Mandrake 10 and SuSE 9.1 and see how the new 2.6 kernel works on it. I thought I'd have more problems installing Linux on an old Compaq, but the biggest problem is that the Compaq doesn't boot from the CD-ROM. I can do a floppy boot from Red Hat 7.2 and it recognized the CD-ROM drive for the install, but for whatever reason Mandrake 10 just flat out doesn't recognize it. No biggie though, I'll probably try a network install later.

I'll probably configure the Compaq as a gateway/router, or use it as a thin client and access the file server for the apps.

I'm running Red Hat 9.0 on an old HP Vectra Corprate PC--It works fine except I'm having trouble with my USB adapter for a wireless network, but that's only because it has a broadcom 4301 chipset...

I plan to use it for dns, apache, mail, ftp, and telnet

Esher2292

I have an old Acer notebook 735 with a 33Mhz 486SX, 4MB of RAM, and a 200MB HD, and running SmallLinux works great. Im trying to get X working (found a version that works in less than 4MB of RAM!), but having troubles with that. I even got C/C++-enabled GCC working on there using 2 floppies, 2 hours, and alot of patience.