Looking for a decent distro that would fit on a 1gig CF card.

I have an older touch screen computer I would like to make into a sorta alarm clock.

The tablet was an order pad in a former life. Made by norand. It's running win95 now.

I couldn't find it on linuxonlaptops.

The tablet is a Pentium 1( I believe.)
I think it has 32mb ram.
1 gig hd.
2 pcmcia slots.
no keyboard - has a connection for one. ps2?

I know vector and dsl are small, but not sure how they do on cf card.
Vector seems workable.

I am looking for KDE - for Kalarm.
I will probably run fluxbox with kde packages.

Things I will need.
Pcmcia to work for cf card and linsys 802.11b card.
Handwriting recognition. ( I would rather not have to use a keyboard.)
Play mp3's too get to sleep. XMMS?
A program to wake me up. (kalarm)?
----I guess this could be done with cron somehow.


I am a and I really like linux so I would like it on any system I can get it on.
Any suggestion/wisdom are appreciated.

Regards,
Blair

eh.. you're asking for quite a bit for what you'll be working with but meh.

Damn Small is excellent - small and yet some amazing apps, but you've already mentioned above that it might not work. My suggestion - go with NetBSD highly portible and managable. Unfortunately this could be a bit too much for you to handle right now. You might also try a really old distro that runs KDE so you can get the apps you want (and old Mandrake or Slack *might* work).

NetBSD is what you want but at the same time you don't want it. Hard to explain but it's Unix, it'll work just fine but it's kind of hellish if you're just starting out.

I have played around with FreeBSD on a old p2 desktop. I like it, but it is still a little past my grasp of linux/unix.
I like dsl, but I think it might be too minimalistic. It will probably work. I like the wm, and the apps that come with it. I really like Dillo.
I just thought if I was going to blow money on a 1gig flash I might as well fill it up.
I could care less about KDE for gui. I like fluxbox. On an old machine I don't need the bloat.
I like vector , but I am unsure how to install to CF card.
I could prob use my mandrake laptop to partition the drive and install it that way....Still a newbie.
Not sure how I install on one system and use on another....Not sure what happens to xorg or xfree.

Just hoping someone might have a similar setup or have tried this before.

Regards,
Blair

I can't say that I have but I hope to run BSD off a _very_ old PC in the closet. I'd say go with DSL if you like it, trial and error.

Thank you. Mr. Hill.

Anyone know of another distro that would work......?

Regards,
Blair

Very cool idea there. I like it.
My first though was that a Live CD distro might go well on the flash card. No idea which one, or how to do it, but it would probably grant quite a few features.

Good luck with this. I bow in your general direction.

Im a linux rookie, but i think that maybe an older version of a distribution may be a good idea, like a old version of slackware or such?

I forgot to say above, but there is no cd rom, usb, or floppy.
So I can't figure out how to run a live distro.
Instead of an older distro I would like to run a minimal current distro.
The part I cant figure out is the getting the flash card set up for the handheld.
Not sure what I need to load to get the touchscreen to work.

Thanks for all the input.

Blair

use another pc and a card reader to extract a iso onto the card and then put it in the pc you want it in eh?

hmmmmmm, That will work?

I thought I had to partition drive. / , /boot . /swap , /home
Then install as normal.

Forgot to look at bios before I left for easter holiday.
I will check it tonight to see if it can boot from removable hd.

Thanks,
Blair

oh yeah your using the cf card as a hard drive, sorry im such a linux n00b!

You can't be that big a noob. You are running slackware.


Um,
good and bad news for me.

Good news: Pheonix bois will boot from pcmcia. (Pheonix NoteBios 4.0)
Bad news: I was wrong it only has 16mb ram.

Can anyone point me to a good Linux on compact flash tutorial?



Thanks,
Blair