Slackware on Low-Spec Machine With X?

inkysplat · 03-21-2004, 04:49 AM

Hey friends,

i have an really old computer, (spec: Pentium 133MHz, 16MB EDORAM, 1.2GB Hardisk, 16bit sound, 1MB PCI VGA, 8x CDrom) and recently found an old hardisk (10GB) which i planned to install slackware onto and put into my old computer.

However in the past i have used mulinux (2 floppy live distro) and X didn't start, it had error or something (which i can't recall now) but i was wondering would this spec be enough to get X running and allow me to run KDE or Gnome or at lease FVWM95?

kobs · 03-21-2004, 05:10 AM

I wouldn't recommend KDE or Gnome...but give Openbox, Fluxbox, Blackbox, FVWM95...(the lightweight ones) a try..

Trust · 03-21-2004, 05:22 AM

I have another box that I was trying to put my HDD that contained Slackware in, it has a video card from ~96 (this was currently running win95 well). However, when I put Slackware in there it wouldn't even display the text you see when booting properly, much less any GUI stuff.

Hangdog42 · 03-21-2004, 08:30 AM

My first Slackware box had pretty much those specs, except I had 49MB RAM. In text mode, Slackware works fantastically, but in X it is, well, s l o w even with fluxbox. Forget about Gnome or KDE unless you have the patience of a saint.

dr_van_nostrand · 03-21-2004, 09:18 AM

I have a similar box, except that it has 128M ram and 10g hd. X works very nice with blackbox, icewm, windowmaker, xfce etc. Believe it's because of the ram. The video driver is just Vesa as far as i remember. It should work but maybe som extar ram will help you.

gnashley · 03-21-2004, 11:21 AM

see the HOWTO:
http://home.earthlink.net/~gnashley/...x_8.1howto.htm
16MB RAM is JUST enough to run X (you'll probably need at least 16-32MB swap also). The video RAM is a problem, you'll probably only get 800x600 resolution. Use vesa frame buffer and fluxbox or windowmaker.
If the vesa frame buffer won't work try xf86cfg -textmode and see if it has a driver for your card or install xfree86-xvfb and try that.
use opera browser and ROX-Filer

Tomlewis007 · 03-22-2004, 05:08 AM

I think this will also help me as i was looking to do a sub 200mb slacky install.

i tried the link and it was dead but this does work

http://home.earthlink.net/~gnashley/phnxhtml/

and then click the how to htm file

Im hoping to get a slackware install with

Apache
Perl
Samba
Pro FTPD
Vgetty Voice Mail
Webmin

Anyanything else that will help as a home server