I am trying to convert a Compaq Laptop to a Linux appliance. 114K of memory and a Pentium MMX processor. Can it be done?

a pentium with 114K? don't you mean 114M?
even 486 computers often came with up to 4 Megs

yes it can be done, but you won't get much out of it.

Everyone has their favorite small distro.

DSL (damn small linux) has a few choices that might be worth a look at. Slitaz and antix might also be worth a try. See if puppy linux might work.

There some text based and maybe even a BSD that would work.

Why? What is your goal with such old underpowered hardware?

Have you considered simply purchasing new hardware? For example a Raspberry Pi costs $25 and has 700mhz processor, 256mb RAM, and can playback good-quality video. http://www.raspberrypi.org/

If you ask your friends/family/coworkers you can probably find a pretty decent machine for free. I recently got two dual-core computers with Windows Vista as hand-me-downs from relatives who simply purchased a new computer to get Windows 7 rather than try to upgrade. (Of course I wiped Vista and replaced it with Linux.) Windows XP computers are easy to find on Freecycle or in the trash. Your Pentium MMX was probably what, Windows 95 originally?

Such a machine can easily be setup as a terminal to access other machines via SSH or can act itself as a small file- or web-server or may be a jukebox. Also, it may simply be done for the learning experience of setting up minimal systems on low end hardware.

If you want to use something that works more or less out of the box you should try antiX or Vector Light, if you want to do it yourself I would recommend to make a minimal install of Debian or Slackware and build your system up with lightweight software until it fits your needs (and isn't to heavy for the hardware).

Distros that I personally would not recommend to use on low-RAM hardware are Slitaz, Tinycore and Puppy.

ps there are some good project ideas on this site: http://kmandla.wordpress.com

I haven't tries the latest AntiX yet (it's sitting in the drive waiting) but the last one ran the Ted word processor or the Dillo web-browser in under 60MB. Tiny Core and Damn Small need quite a bit of configuring to get a usable system, but AntiX is ready to use.

You could get a basic Slackware system on such a machine. You'd nee a very light window manager if you wanted to try a GUI and it would likely do a lot of disk swapping due to the limited memory.

I was mistaken on the RAM 147 MB, so I'm going to give Slackware a try. The reason I'm asking is for this is I have owned this LT for 10 years and would hate to throw it on the trash heap (I mean recycle Heap). And mostly to learn more about Linux inerds....

Thanks for all the replies.

Thanks for replying.

Live cd's are a great way to test out distro's. If you don't get one working try some of the others.

Just as in this post. You see some folks like one thing and hate another. Try what you can get your hands on and see what you like best. You are very limited with that system. Only a small subset of linux with a gui can work on it.

A live CD might not be the best bet since on such an old machine it will be slow as all getup. I'll echo the suggestions for SL or DSL. You might also want to try some of the lighter window managers.

A live cd tests the distro's ability to run on their hardware. It is a simple gauge to know how much or little work they need to do to use it in a proper install.

True.
Just keep in mind that live-CDs have higher memory requirements. This can lead to situations were the live-CD doesn't work at all (not enough memory, no swap space available) or very slow (not enough memory, swap space used), although the same system installed to a harddisk works fine.

I've just tried the new version of AntiX and I was very impressed. Read all about it:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...page/15/sort/7
The flash problem I mention has a solution:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...us-4175420481/