I'm about to try installing debian on a Pentium 166 with 64MB and a 10GB hard drive. I intend to use fluxbox as the WM, and the only other apps to be used would be an mp3 player, gaim, and a browser. I'm wondering if anyone has any tips to installing debian on a PC like this. I have a high-speed connection so I can do the net-install, but I'm using an airlink Wireless G card. Should I use stable or testing for apt? Thanks in advance for your help.

It should work fine on that kind of system, just avoid installing the base KDE + Gnome during the install as you're not really going to need it and will save on hard drive space. That said, you could install them both along with a bunch of other apps and would only eat 1-1.5Gb or so. Up to you. Fluxbox or similar would be the way to go WM wise, would not recommend anything heavier with 64Mb RAM. I've ran P100Mhz + 32Mb RAM with fluxbox quite happily on the net with e-mail, so as long as you don't a load of unneccessary service in the background, shouldn't be a problem, though may take a while to actually install it. I'd say go with stable as any problems you encounter with testing will take longer to correct by having to install additional dependencies, upgrade/downgrade packages, etc. Suppose it's the same with any machine though when debating which branch to use - how much time do you want to spend sorting it if something goes wrong ?

I'm sure this must be answered somewhere, but I don't know where. What are some reccommend apps for IM, web browsing and mp3 playing for a lowend PC?

edit: Also, how would I go about installing debian with the net install disc, if my pc can not boot from CD-ROM? I'm assuming I'd need to boot from floppy.

edit 2: It turns out my PC can boot from CD-ROM, I put the debian net-install disc in, and it just says: ISOLINUX 2.04 2003-04-16 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 H. Peter Anvin. It is not doing anything else and it has been sitting for about 10 minutes.

IM - you're on your own, but there are a bunch of command lines ones that work with icq, center icq, etc.
web browsing - lynx, elinks, dillo, opera
mp3 - mpeg321, mp3blaster, xmms

Search for more here.

Didja try hitting the enter key?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by rbochan
IM - you're on your own, but there are a bunch of command lines ones that work with icq, center icq, etc.
web browsing - lynx, elinks, dillo, opera
mp3 - mpeg321, mp3blaster, xmms

Search for more here.



Didja try hitting the enter key? [/QUOTE

Yes I tried hitting the enter key. If I can't get the CD to boot on that PC, could I put the hard drive into my main PC AMD XP 2500+ , 768 MB RAM, and install debian? If I were to do that, how would I go about it?

Hmm...have you done a Debian net install before? If so, then you should be familiar with the basic steps:

1. Boot off of CD
2. Partition and such
3. Install base installation and GRUB
4. Shutdown, removing CD
5. Reboot, and then all the rest of the stuff gets installed and configured

I think that you can do steps 1 to 4 on your other computer, putting the hard drive on the desired channel (i.e. putting it in the primary channel as master, so it's hda).

Then instead of rebooting you just shut down and move the hard drive to the other computer.

I think this will work, but I'm not positive about when the network connection is configured. I'd think it would happen after the reboot.

Yes you could do that... shouldn't be all that difficult. An easier solution might be to boot off a floppy to get access to the cdrom. Check the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide for details.

That sounds really strange. Check if the cdrom you burned w/ the netinstall is ok -just guessing.... -

It doesn't seem natural that the cd displays the welcome msg (ISOLINUX 2.04 2003-blah, blah, blah...) but stops unexpectedly......

Also, as rbochan points; check out the Debian documentation carefully.

And BTW....I have got Debian Etch running happily on a P200 MMX 160 mb ram...

Hi,

I'm running debian on a 166mhz. I use the testing branch, because stable usually gets to old and unstable can be unstable (duh). Testing is stable and has quite new software.

The apps I use are listed on my webpage:
http://users.skynet.be/six/gpure/tech/linux/apps.html

In short:
IM: irssi + bitlbee

browser: it's difficult to name 1 good lightweight browserto use for every site because there isn't one. I use elinks (text) mostly. But as backup I have dillo, links2 and firefox. Firefox is usable if you use pageup pagedown and not scroll down the websites. Pageup/pagedown uses much less cpu.

music: I use cplay(frontend)+madplay --downsample -m and ogg123. Because I love cplay's interface. But mp3blaster uses less cpu (much less then any other mp3player).

email: mutt or muttng with esmtp (or ssmtp)


I also have a webpage on how I install debian testing (I try to use the minimal amount of MB without going trough much hassle and keeping a good usable computer interface). Here it is:
http://users.skynet.be/six/gpure/tech/linux/debian.html

If I were trying to install a kernel image from apt, would I be installing the 686 image or the 386 image?

the 586 kernel image is for pentium1

grtz

Is there a 586 image? I do not see one. http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/s...le&release=all

Do apt-cache search kernel-image and you'll see a list of kernels. In debian testing I use this on my 166mhz:

kernel-image-2.4.27-2-586tsc - Linux kernel image for version 2.4.27 on Pentium-Classic

It's not 2.6, but I don't think the newer version 2.6 has anything over 2.4 for an old system like a p1.

If you want another kernel you can just use 386 or 486 versions too. But 686 will NOT work on a p1 (which is a 586 processor).

grtz

Chances are even a standard Pentium 166 won't boot at all -if kernel 2.6 is installed. I tried this on my P200 MMX and had to reinstall again because the box did not rise up

It kept repeating the booting sequence over and over...