I have an ancient Dell Latitude LM that I'm trying to install Linux on:

Dell Latitude LM
- P133 processor
- 3Com Megahertz 3CCFE574BT ethernet PC card
- 40 mb memory
- 3gb hard drive
- Slot for either floppy drive or CD-ROM, not hot-swappable
- Can't boot from the CDROM

I visited the 'Linux Distribution Chooser' and it suggested Debian.

What I'm looking for above all else is this: The ability to run KDE with the fastest possible performance (on the slowest possible machine).
Not that I don't trust the Distro Chooser, but I was wondering what someone with experience installing Linux on older laptops would think.

Also, I managed to download and write the Debian floppy images and get stuck at the network install because even though it has my ethernet drivers the module fails to load. Apparently I need to pass parameters to the module and I don't know how. Unfortunately I have no Idea what the i/o# or irq# is. All I know is I have the 3Com card in the bottom of the 2 slots.

So any opinions? Is Debian the best choice? And anyone know anything about these old Dell laptops?

Also also: can I just install a base system on the HD using only floppies so I can boot my computer with the CD drive installed and THEN install from CD?

Debian should work fine on that machine, but seriously, don't expect miracles when it comes to performance.

Forget that right now. Short of running a 1.x or 2.x (read: ancient) version of KDE on a 133/40 meg, you're going to hate it. Hate it hate hate it.
You'd be much better off running blackbox or even foregoing x altogether. If you do go x, use really lightweight stuff... dillo or elinks for browser, xfe or mc for file manager, etc.

My laptop is old and slow, but you have even lower specs than mine, so be forewarned to, once again, don't expect miracles.

Is it a pcmcia card or built in?

Debian's a great choice. See here, you might be able to get some insight into hardware settings, even if you can't find that exact same model.

Are you sure you can't load up a cdrom drivers floppy set and get the cdrom running from there? D'oh, you can't hot swap, so perhaps you might try bootstrapping off the hard drive. You might even start off with the old woody floppies to get to a base install, then dist-upgrade to Sarge from there.
You might check here for some alternate install methods.

Good luck!

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it! I currently have Windows 98 installed but it's really slow and it gets on my nerves.

The LAN card is a removable PCMCIA card and it's in the bottom slot.

I also have a serial zip 100 drive which I used to install win98, but not sure how well that would work for linux.
What about Damn Small Linux? I saw it mentioned in a related thread. It's a pretty minimal system and is supposed to work well with older hardware.

All I really need to do is install just enough of a system from a floppy (or floppies) so it will boot from the hard drive. Just enough for me to partition a hard drive and install just enough of a system for me to be able to boot into a shell from the HD.

Then I could boot my laptop with the CD-ROM installed and maybe mount the CD and install a full system from there.

Is there any way to do that in Linux?

zipslack would also be good choice. I've never tried it but STX might also be good. AFAIK there are only parallel port, SCSI, USB or IDE Zip 100 drives.

I haven't used Damn Small Linux in couple of versions, so I can't comment on how well it works. It is based on Debian, so it's ok in my book ;-)

I have zero experience trying to boot off of, or install from, any sort of zip drive, so you're on your own there.

If it were me, I'd use the 6 install floppies for Debian Woody to get network up for a base install, then dist-upgrade to Sarge. I only say that because I can't say from experience how a floppy based install of Sarge would go, or even if a true floppy base is available. I've done 100+ Woody floppy installs, as I used to run it and play around on a laptop that had no cdrom, so I about got to the point that I could do it with my eyes closed. You can still start off with a 2.4.x kernel, or even use the 2.2.x kernel that came default with Woody - the old hardware shouldn't need any of the features (and bloat) of later kernels, so it should work ok.

Regardless of what you end up installing, expect a few headaches... especially if you want to get sound working. Those old sound chips are evil, and you'll most likely have to provide irq, io, and dma settings to get them to work. Google will be your friend on that.


Good luck.

Actually, I've been playing around with it on another computer, and I really like it. I wouldn't need anything fancier than that, and I really like the default WM (I think it's blackbox or fluxbox or something). Plus it's really fast on my old Duron 750 machine w/64mb ram. Don't know how I would go about installing on my laptop tho or how well it would run.

Oops... I meant parallel.


As far as the woody disks go, maybe I'll give that a shot. I haven't been able to turn up much info on my laptop so far tho, so I don't know if this is even going to work. I would just keep using Win98 with it but I would like to be able to use it to poke around in Linux. That and I'm getting pretty bored with Windows.

I haven't had much luck with that so far, but I did come across a page where a guy installed Tiny Linux on his old Dell p100. Know anything about Tiny Linux?

Okay... what about filesystems? (ext2, ext3, reiser) Which one would give me the best performance on an old, slow laptop hard drive? Or does it matter?
And, my laptop is so basic it doesn't even have USB. Would I benefit from kernel 2.4, or would it just slow me down?

OK, I'm really glad I didn't blow away my Win98 install because right *after* doing some more research on the web and just *before* smacking myself in the head, I realized I could just look to see which resources are assigned under windows.

Here's a list of every device which is assigned an IRQ under Win98:

IRQ....HARDWARE....................................I/O RANGE..........................DMA
00.....system timer................................0040-0043
01.....keyboard....................................0060-0060 0064-0064
02.....programmable interrupt controller...........0020-0021 00A0-00A1
03.....infrared PNP serial port (*PNP0510).........02F8-02FF
04.....communications port (COM1)..................03F8-03FF
05.....ES1688 PNP AudioDrive audio controller......0220-022F 0388-038B 0330-0331
06.....floppy contrtoller..........................03F0-03F5 03F7-03F7.................02
07.....printer (lpt1)..............................0378-037F 0778-077A
08.....CMOS/clock..................................0070-0071
10.....FE574B-3com ethernet PC card................0120-013F
11.....PCMCIA card modem...........................03E8-03EF
12.....PS/2 mouse port
13.....numeric data processor......................00F0-00FF
14.....IDE/ESDI hard disk controller...............01F0-01F7 03F6-03F6
15.....IRQ holder for PCI steering
15.....neomagic magicgraph 128 PCI graphics chip...03B0-03BB 03C0-03DF

Maybe someone else will find this useful.

Also http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...pmmx/specs.htm should help and there is redhat install notes for similar model on web. Good luck. There are upgrade parts available too.

Well, I did get a very basic Debian Woody install up and running using the 20 base floppies (YES!!). Unfortunately I can't connect to the internet yet.
On the positive side, my 3com ethernet card was detected and installed and the little light on the dongle is on.

Now I just have to figure out how to connect to the internet, and then figure out how to update my system.

Thanks for the help! I'm off to the Debian forum.

UPDATE!

Now my internet is up and running. Next step is installing the rest of Debian from the net.

For future reference, the Debian Woody install worked flawlessly and I would recommend it to anyone with a similar hardware situation. It even detected my PCMCIA NIC. The actual install process took a lot less time than writing all those cursed little floppies.
After install, all I had to do was add a couple lines to /etc/network/interfaces to get my network up (see my post in the networking forum).

kudos. Good luck on the rest of the config.