I have an old PII (64 MB RAM) with two small hard drives- 1.2 GB each. All I have on the PC right now is Windows 98SE. Can I fit Redhat or Mandrake on one of those hard drives? Or should I shop around for a bigger HD (and maybe more RAM)?
Thanks,
bondfan

both really... you *should* shop around, BUT if you're just after a taste of what it's like, you can install a basic system on the two drives ok. you'll probably want to dedicate one drive to /usr alone (so the slave i'd say), and everything else on the other drive (master). it won't be amazing, but as you know, that's an old bit of kit now, so don't go running gnome2 or kde3 on it....

For RH9 a custom installation requires 475MB for a minimal installation and at least 5.0GB of free space if every package is selected. Mandrake should be similar.

64MB is really not enough memory. I suggest slackware.

Yes that's doable, tho not a development box as it would be short of spcae. Okay for a desktop system. It would be best to use both drives and put your root / partition on one drive and the /swap and /home on the other... If you want to keep win98 on one partition, then you are pushing the limits, tho I've installed MDK 9.2 on a 2 gig drive. Doesn't give you much room for swap, which you will need with just 64 meg ram. May be possible, but leaves you with limitted applications.

64 meg of ram will run, even KDE, but will swap a bit, so you need more swap space. 128 is much better and you can find cheap ram to suit easy enough...

Finding a good drive under 32meg for the right price is harder... But finding an 8 gig drive would be a big help

What speed P2 by the way? Linux will run on any P2 okay anyway, just curious. I'm asuming a 350 as they are so common...