Hello, everybody.

I have a laptop with a partially broken video-card and faulty keyboard. Apart from that the CPU is a 64-bit model and very fast with 4 GB of Ram.
I tried tens of modern distributions (most of them 64-bit version) but they all fail because of errors related to the video-card (at least I think so) and sometimes the keyboard.

However, I managed to load and work with some "old" distributions like Puppy Linux 4.3.1 though in 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768. Besides, Salix Linux 14 manages to complete the installation in 64-bit mode (the only one!)

I overcome the faulty keyboard with a cheap USB keyboard which quite perfectly overlaps the original keyboard.

1) My first question is: can you suggest me a good text-based 64-bit distribution which can allow more than basic operation (for instance, ethernet configuration, sound manager, text-based browser like elinks, and so on)?
Please, note that also ttylinux 16 64-bit fails and never complete the boot!!

2) Besides, can you suggest some other text-based distribution for a Pentium I 166 MHz, 128 MB RAM?

3) What do you think of Sparky Linux CLI version?

4) And about FreeBSD i386 version, does it deserve a try?

Thank you in advance.

i installed fedora-20 on a netbook with a cracked screen (i basically use it as a diy nas). i disabled the graphical login at boot by running:

Slackware.

Everything in Slackware that has the option of not being linked against X is not linked against X. Slackware includes links in its default install, and it gives you ways to set up your wired and wireless network connections without using X.

Slackware also is (in)famous for not booting into X by default.

1. Text-based distro: Slackware or (my preference) Salix — Slackware with added user friendliness!

2. Pentium I will need a non-pae kernel, which narrows the field. I'd suggest Antix, which will run in 128MB even with the GUI. They recommend a Pentium II for best performance, but cutting out the GUI would obviously take care of that.

3. Sparky is very good. I've only used version 3.4 with Xfce, though.

4. Frankly I can never see the point of BSD, so I've never used it. If it's so wonderful, why does hardly anyone use it? And before the fanboys get going and say "hardly anyone uses Linux compared with Windows", look at the data on web-servers: mostly running Linux — the only big-name company with BSD that I know of is Yahoo.

Δ mac-osx is based on the bsdi kernel.

In a real sense, all distro's are based on two parts. The underlying OS and some window manager. You don't need to install the window manager but in some cases it isn't easy to avoid. Somewhat easy to remove.

Big distro's tend to offer a way to just install cli or JEOS. Opensuse, debian, Centos and such are good choices.


I've used FreeBSD and the NetBSD over the last few decades. They work good.

In all of this I have to say that maybe your systems could boot to gui.

The "server" or "minimal" version of nearly any distro will be cli-only, and you can install all of the cli-only programs you want on it using the standard package management system.

Unlike MS-Windows, Linux/Unix uses a client/server graphic user interface (XWindows/XOrg). This means that there are two functional units: the part that builds the display, and the part that renders it. The two don't have to be on the same machine. Therefore, you can connect to your "busted" machine, and use it with a GUI, from any other machine. (And this is not the "Windows Remote Desktop" approach, which is schlepping bitmaps around ...)

I think this may be a tough option, but a search of distrowatch may help. There is also INX which seems intriguing but I have yet to try it out, it does not seem to exist in distrowatch.

yes, but I think it's system requirements may also be heading up. But I think NetBSD will work fine. I have it on a old AMD 333MHz (=PII?) which I use as a file backup system. Seems zippy and and have not had any issues. Getting linux on that system has proved difficult starting with kernel 2.6

John

Try a Debian net-install image.

On reflection, I suspect that the differences between distros are reduced if you only use the CLI. Obviously, there will still be a difference between huge (Debian) and tiny (CentOS, Slackware), and between enterprise-class (Debian Stable) and bleeding-edge (Debian Sid). But if you consider other differences:
1. preferred GUI (and few distros are equally convenient with all the GUIs they offer) is obviously irrelevant.
2. installers will be much the same (unless, like Arch, they don't bother with one). The intricacies of Anaconda are not paralleled in keyboard-based installers.
3. distinctive "house-keeping tools" are generally GUI. Ubuntu's Software Centre may be a far cry from package-kit, but "apt-get install X" is no surprise after "yum install X".

Arch just install the base and go, centos also has a text installer.

You can of course do a full install and run it mostly cli. I'm posting this from the cli of Ubuntu 14.04 and Elinks. I've configured the install to boot to the command line first. Once you work out the details you can experiment with lighter WM's that may work with your video card, lxde etc.

Hello to everybody and thank you very much for your precious comments.

I decided to re-install Salix Ratpoison since it is based on Slackware on the 64-bit half-broken laptop.

Then, I am going to partition the hard-disk and try debian.