FedoraThis forum is for the discussion of the Fedora Project.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Distribution: Ubuntu n' Flavors, ReactOS, MINIX3, FreeDOS, Arch
Posts: 339
Rep:
Install Fedora with VERY little RAM
Ok here is my comp:
Dell Dimension 4550
Pentium 4
I have no idea what my GH is
i386 der
256 Megs of RAM (technically 255 one MB reserved for BIOS settings)
Fedora DVD installer
No Internet Whatsoever Downloaded on different computer than burnt
It gets stuk at:
Trying to read bootft as inisomething
I have read about people having trouble with 512megs of ram is it even viable to install fedora? Can anyone help? I want the DVD installation because I don't have Internet and Kubuntu's reliance on Internet is starting to get on my nerves... Sorry didn't see the instalation forum... Admin could you move this please I don't think I can...
As long as you dont want the absolute newest packages, debian stable is (IMO) worth trying for offline use. You can d/l the whole repo on DVDs if you want.
I have an old box, much like yours, on which I installed a minimal, no GUI, Fedora. But that was quite painfully slow. (Later I cannibalized a couple other old boxes I had and upped the memory to 512Mb, which let me install an run an XFCE desktop.) Buying new RAM for an old box is prohibitively expensive since those chips have been out of production for several years now, but you can sometimes find old chips are electronics recycle shops.
May I ask why you're trying to install Fedora on such an old system? I only did it because I wanted to scavenge files from some IDE drives, and my last USB enclosure for 3.5" parallel drive failed. Since I had those old systems with parallel drive controllers, and no other need for an old USB drive enclosure, it seemed a good thing to try.
I would advise against a fedora installation on such little memory. There are other distributions (Slitaz, puppy, DamnSmall Linux) that work very well on old hardware, as well as streamlined installations of Debian and Slackware being usable on underpowered machines. If you must use fedora for whatever reason maybe the LXDE spin would work, but don't expect great performance. If you don't need the GUI then you may want to skip it entirely.
256MB was low even a few years ago. With everything growing in size, that little RAM is going to be stretched further. I'd say if you can, try to add more to your system. The good news these days is that RAM memory is growing exponentially, so you can get 8GB of DDR3 for under $40. Newegg does sell some SDRAM, but it's only for 256MB and 512MB modules.
However, if you still want to stay in Red Hat camp, Scientific Linux makes a custom IceWM CD called LiveMiniCD for which its used for older computers. I don't know if the install will work, but you can give it a try. It might also help to enable a swap partition if the installer doesn't work.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.