linux for a 486 laptop
 

Aight, here's what's going on. I want to install linux on a 486 laptop that has a 514meg HD. I need a version of linux to run on this thing, but it also has to have modem support, telnet, ftp, bash, etc etc...

The Laptop has no CD-ROM so that's outta the question.

I'm used to running the Slackware version of linux, and don't plan on running any kinda of GUI (KDE, X Windows, GNOME) just the shell.

Anyone help?

Use the search form on this forum.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=83387

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

On a side note, please try to make better and more helpful thread titles in the future. Your title in no way gives us what your specific questions is regarding. Thanks.

You could have a look at:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis...ions/baslinux/

BasicLinux is a mini-Linux that runs in a 4mb ramdisk. It has a fully-featured shell, an easy-to-use editor, and a variety of useful utilities. In particular, BasicLinux is well equipped for internet use: it can dial an ISP, browse the web, send/receive mail, and download files.
BasicLinux is a good distribution for an old 486. It is much leaner than RedHat and performs better on old hardware. Although BasicLinux initially runs on a ramdisk, it can be installed to its own HD partition, where additional packages can be added (including X and GCC).

Nothing personal, Skyline, but what's the point of pasting that over and over from the very thing you link to? I must have read that a hundred times by now and tried not to read it another hundred. :D

I figured it out anyway. Kinda a custom Linux job, but it works and runs, so s'all good

Slackware is the best choice, IMO for this kind of thing. I have slack 9.0 running on a notebook with a 486 dx2/40 proc, 28mb of ram and a 256mb drive, XFree 3 is installed and working. Thanks to Slack's separation of the kernel headers/source I'm even able to compile modules on this machine. There's still about 60mb of the drive free, even with a 25mb swap partition. Even got links running in vga mode.

yeah, that's what's on it is slack, but it's slack 8....got slack 8 running on the desktop pc too

Slack 8 is good also :)

Hey Beavis, what did you install from slackware on that laptop? I have a similar laptop, Toshiba with 50mhz cpu, 16mb RAM, and around 400mb hard drive. Thanks alot.

Wow, you've got almost 2x the drive space of my contura 400cx, as well as a much faster proc(mine is a 486 dx2/40) but sadly, almost half the memory. May I suggest a memory upgrade via Ebay? That's where I found the chips to boost my contura to 28mb from only 4mb, man, what a difference. Admittedly, as my 3rd notebook, it's a toy, but it's still fun and the screen is amazingly nice for it's era.

Anyway, when it was only 4mb of ram, I followed the "4mb laptop" howto on tldp.org, a very nice howto, very accurate and all went well. Once I got it to 28mb, I went with an NFS installation of Slack9, and it was well worth it, Slack9 rocks

In short: I downloaded the "slackware" directory from Slack9 from the nearest ftp mirror to another box on my network, I exported that directory to the contura's anticipated ip address via /etc/exports and then ran exportfs -a. Then, I fixed up a custom bootdisk for slack9, adding my wireless card's module (atmelwlandriver) to the pcmcia boot disk. After that it was all about mounting the the directory containing the slackware dir and then telling setup to get it on.

To do this you'll need another box running slack9, and a working network to put both machines on. You can also use a wired pcmcia adapter, which I have done also, mine is a Linksys pcm100 which is supported out-of-the-box these days, eliminating the need to losetup the slack pcmcia disk and dd it back out.

EDIT: crap, just saw your question "what did you install...", if you mean exactly what packages I installed, let me know and I'll post the list.

Yeah I do need a memory upgrade, I was looking to get the 24mb chip for the laptop. I do know what packages to install, Ive installed A, D, and N but I also wanted to know what out of those do I really need. When I install those 3 in full, I only have 18mb left on my Hard drive. If you could help, thanks alot.

If that's all you have left, you've got some fluff in there somewhere :D...

Ok, give me like, 20 minutes and I'll post a link that will take you to a text file listing all the normal files on the machine. The file's gonna be too big to politely post here.

Also, you may want to check out the 4mb laptop howto on tldp.org and follow at least a few of the memory conservation recommendations there, it really helps. The one thing I'll *never* go back to is the ash shell although it did make the machine usable with 4mb. Curious: how big is your swap part?

Ok, here it is, and it's 617.7Kb. Now that I look at the complete list, I still see quite a bit of fluff on that little box, aah well another day...

EDIT: url removed, no longer valid.

this is a plain text file, I skipped the /dev and /tmp directories.

correction: there's 81% of the drive used by the files(about 160mb), about 39mb left and a swap part of 26mb. With XFree 3 and twm running memory usage is maxed, but running X apps remotely is a viable option, firebird and opera both work well that way.

PS: If you need this listing for more than the next hour or so, download it to your machine, I'm not going to leave it up for very long as it's large and will eat my bandwidth if it gets too many clicks.

My swap space is 26mb also beavis. Now, after I do the install of slack 9, I should go through that list and remove the stuff thats not there? Or is there some way of doing during the installation?

Yes, I used individual package selection, I went minimalist and missed a few I needed, not a big deal, just remount the source dir and run installpkg for the ones you miss that you end up needing.

I also went through and hand-deleted a lot of things, mostly kernel modules for hardware not present and userspace applications for the same thing. I did a hand-install of XFree86 3, which may have had the effect of trimming things down as well.

As the list shows, there's still a good bit of stuff I can delete, if I come up with a way to automate it I'll post back to you.

Thanks alot for the help, Ill do the installation once I get my desktop system fully up and running. Oh by the way, what windows manager did you say you were running? I might try to install one if possible.

hehe, TWM, the most minimalist no-eye-candy wm available, it's just enought to let you move/size windows. Actually, I've been using icewm-light on my thinkpad a good bit and am considering installing that instead. You'll need to install XFree86 first of course. I'm using version 3.3.something due to the age of the video card, it get's recognized fine, but the config needed a good bit of modeline and clocks tweaking.

Hey Beavis, have you used BasicLinux? Its based on Slack 7.1 and boots off 2 floppys. There is a way to install it to the hard drive, but from what I understand it needs a DOS instalation to boot using loadlin. If you have used it, id like to know what you know about it. Thanks for all your help.

I've not heard of that one, as per the 4mb laptop howto, I used small linux and ended up installing it to the drive, it fit just fine in a 5mb partition, but never got X working with it so just used it to get a slack8 install going, then got the memory upgrade and went w/slack9.

.

I followed the 4MB linux install guide to install slackware 9, its using a total of 170 of 305MB on /dev/hda1 with 24mb swap. Now I would like to know how you installed X Beavis. I used the packages that come with slack 9 and running Fluxbox, but It seems VERY slow when starting. I didnt install any compilers so I cant compile any source localy on my laptop. I can however compile on my desktop wich is also Slack 9. Can I compile X with minimal settings on my desktop and transfer it to my laptop? I know next I need to compile a new kernel to make smaller and light weight. Any other suggestions guys? Thanks for your help Beavis.

Nice work, slack 9 in only 170mb, very nice. Yes, I'm doing the same thing, compiling things on a slack9 desktop and using nfs to transfer to the little notebook.

As for X, I downloaded 3.3 from XFree86.org, 4 has a lot of things for modern video cards that I just couldn't use on that little notebook, so I would recommend v3. Did you go through and follow the recommendations in the 4mb laptop howto for conserving memory? ie: running 2 or at most 3 getty's instead of 6 or 7. With only 16mb, you may want to go with ash instead of bash as your shell, it works and is much smaller, and you'll get good typing practice as a bonus ;)

Before you go running off compiling a kernel, take a look at the config for the stock slack9 kernel, when he named it bare.i, he wasn't kidding, nearly everything is already a module, even pcmcia. Nonetheless, if a memory upgrade is not in your future, compiling a new kernel could be worth it, and then you know you've eliminated all the fluff.

I'd be curious what the output of free and ps -A are showing before you start X, can you post?

I wont be ablt to post those results, as Ive taken off X and the WM. Actually I double checked and Slack9 takes up 149Mb, with bash since thats what I know.

So you think I should leave the kernel as is? Sounds good to me, less work. Hehehehe.

Ill try installing X 3.3 with blackbox this time, but I have a question. Can I install the X 3.3 packages from Slack 7.1? Or should I compile it from source? If so, how would I compile is on my desktop and transfer it to the laptop?

Maybe I should ask how you did it Beavis, since you seem to have it running good. Thanks again.

I would not install anything from slack 7.1, the compiler and libs have changed quite a bit. You can just go to XFree86.org and download version 3, making sure you pick the one compiled with gcc 3.x, and not 2.x. even without X, you should still be able to get online with the box if you installed links, which is a textmode web browser, it works quite well, almost like "being there", heh. see if you have it.

I was just wondering since I didnt install glibc or any compilers on the laptop other than perl and python. Could I posibly compile it on my desktop and turn it into a .tgz package using checkinstall? Thats how ive been doing my other software.

Yeah I do have links installed, thats my only web browser. That is if I cant get X up and running with Blackbox. If youd like Beavis, I can give you my email so that way we can respond to each other faster. Let me know. Thanks.

sorry, I wasn't so clear about this, the downoad of XFree86 that I'm referring to is already compiled, it's binaries.

actually, I'll hit you up w/that button below your post, then you'll get a return address.

beavis, Is there any way I can get you to mail me that list.
dvdljns@yahoo.com