Slack install on old hardware

eloyj88 · 08-28-2004, 05:54 PM

Hello,
My neighbor gave me a very old PC with 16mb of RAM, 1GB HD, floppy drive and a CDROM drive. Here are my questions:

Is it possible to install Slackware 10.0 in a computer with the specs I mentioned?

Would it be able to run a GUI and if yes which one would you recommend? KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, IceWM?

I would greatly appreciate your help.

hussar · 08-28-2004, 06:43 PM

According to the system requirements page at www.slackware.org, all you need is a 386 machine with 16MB of memory and a 50MB harddrive. X and its associated programs will require more. Either more drive space, more CPU or more memory.

So, the question is, what do you want to do with the machine? I would recommend a less demanding GUI, such as fluxbox or some such. But, I would not plan on doing any rendering for the next big Disney animation production on that particular machine.

Anyway, he gave you the machine. You have it. What have you got to lose (other than instructive time configuring a Slack box)?

WMD · 08-28-2004, 09:49 PM

It would run a GUI, but barely. Fluxbox at most.

If you'd like to experiment, try to install XFree86 3.3 on there instead of 4.3/X.Org. Would probably be faster on such a machine.

eloyj88 · 08-29-2004, 03:16 PM

Thank you for your replies I will try to install Slack in it and will post my outcome when I finish.

Thanks

J.W. · 08-29-2004, 09:38 PM

IIRC, if you've only got a 1G hard drive, you will not be able to do a full install of Slack v10, as it would install approx 2G of data. As I think you already know, running KDE or Gnome with only 16Mg simply is not practical.

You can definitely install Slackware on that machine, but if may make more sense to install an older version of Slack, which would have lesser hardware requirements. Good luck with it. If you've got some spare parts and can do a little upgrading on that machine, it may make the end result far superior -- J.W.

eloyj88 · 09-02-2004, 01:15 PM

hello
When I boot off the bootdisk which image is bare.i, it tells me that the kernel is loading but it never finishes.
Is that a common problem?

I will appreciate any replies.

PS. I read that DSL(Damn Small Linux) does a very good job running on old harware. Would any of you recommend DSL?