Yup. I believe Slack will win the limbo-contest, installing on ultralow-spec-machines. The trouble - IMHO - with Slack is that it's not exactly easy to manage. Depending on DeepSeaNautilus' mileage, this may be an issue to consider.
Of course, venturing into 'specialty-installs' is asking for trouble in the first place :)

learning
 

The best way to learn is asking for trouble, so I will install Slack :)

same here, slackware will run nice. I used to have slackware installed on a laptop with similiar specs. But I believe Damn Small will do the job as well.

What Slackware version are you reffering to?
I was interested about floppy install a while ago and I think I seen
that only version 7 of Slackware can install from floppy.
maybe after that one can upgrade via network to newer/current slackware,
requiring it have enough disk space and Ram.

DeepSeaNautilus: Would you report back on your experience installing Slack on this thing?

Just to help other people with a similar agenda (ultralow-spec-install) in their quest for 'the right distro' :)

You're never going to get anything remotely current running on a machine like this, but if you just want some kind of Linux on it, I would go with an older version of Slackware. You may end up stuck with libc5, though. I doubt that Puppy or DSL is even going to boot in 16 MB of RAM.

Minimum requirements for Damn Small Linux:

Non-Graphical: 486dx with 8mb of Ram (16mb recommended)

With X-Window: 486dx with 16mb of Ram (24mb recommended)

Debian Sarge! Or, use DeLi Linux- based on Slackware- I have two older 16mb machines that run both. If you've got network capabilities, that is. If you don't, i think Basic Linux or Tiny Linux can run a gui environment with floppies.

try this link

http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/

cheers,

Jake

I have a copy of Linux for Dummies: Second Edition, from a few years back.

(I like to use older computer books to teach myself, because they usually teach "the hard way" of doing things. Once I know how to do something "the hard way", it's much easier to improvise solutions to problems that might pop up.)

Anyhoo, it came with a copy of Red Hat Linux (I think it's version 5) that seems to meet your system's specifications, and the book has really good step-by-step installation and customization instructions.

I don`t think that it is advisable to use old un-maintained Linux distribution releases. It compromises your security if your old computer
is connected to any network.
(Unless you are offline or you do it for some museum exibition)

You need to choose what you want to do with older computer in a present day
and depending on configuration, what can be done with it and what can`t.

So I was inspired to drag this toy out of storage. It is an OmniBook 800CT F1360A, 166 MHz with 16MB RAM. It has separate floppy and separate CD drive. The bios only boots from the floppy or hard disk, so finding a way to get this up on a modern Linux distro was a bit of a search.

So I went for Debian and was able to bootstrap network install the Etch (version 4?) from floppies. I had to fiddle a bit to get the Xircom pcmcia NIC to work, but now I am web surfing with it.

Next I am going to see if I can replace the Xircom with a D-Link (DWL-G630 atheros chip) wifi adapter I have lying around. If successful I'll have an antique netbook :cool:

Where there's a linux distro, there's a way:

http://damnsmalllinux.org/486.html

You can also try Slitaz Linux it is suppose to load on computers with less than 32 Megs of ram.

according to here http://www.puppylinux.org/home/overview puppy requirs 96mb of disk space. This is a really interesting problem.