I am looking for a minimal linux distribution that will run on a 386 with 2 megs of ram. This is a laptop, it does *not* have a cd-rom, nor does it have network capabilities. All of the minimal distros I have found so far require 4 megs of ram.

I love Slackware so if a serial install of slackware on this laptop is possible I would much rather do that, however with the 2 megs of memory I do not even know if this would work.

Anyone have a suggestion for a distro, even out of date as I am not worried about hackers. ;-) This laptop is purely to be used as a router/switch terminal.

Thanks in advance...

if you like slackware go to ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/ and get an old version - it looks like they have as old as 3.3. i'm not sure about the minimum system requirements for each version but i'm sure many of those older versions will work on that machine.

hmmm... perhaps a very old version of RedHat would work...

Anyway... I don't think the newer kernel could run on that... you would have to disable most of it's new features.

Try Tom's Root Boot. and from there compile a kernel and compile what programs you need.

I'm not sure it would work... i don't really know the current kernel reqs. Perhaps an older version of the kernel could work.....

Good Luck... and let me know how it goes.

If you're looking for mad minimal, you should go and download CoreLinux.