small installation
 

I'm trying to install slackware 9 on a Compaq laptop with a 2GB hard drive 32 Mb Ram and a P133.
When I ran setup the full install indicated that it wold be more than this. There is the option to select which packages I can install, but which ones?
I wish to have a windows environment (GUI?) connect to a network, type and collect email.
Is this possible?

Hate to say this but a GUI on a 133mhz 32megs of RAM aint going to cut it really with such a newer distro. It will be slow and won't be worth your time. Think of it as trying to install Windows XP on this machine right now, think of how slow its going to be.

Anyways, yes, you can choose what packages to install. After you select the main catagories of packages, like Base Install, X Windows, Common Languages and so on.. its going to bring you to another screen to choose to install all those packages, or custom and so on...

I would seriously rethink the GUI though. You could go with a later version, maybe 7.1 or something with a lighter older Windows environment though... Like I have Redhat 6.2 on a 166mhz and it runs WindowMaker just fine... something like Slackware 7.1 would probably work alot better if you seriuosly want a GUI, and just upgrade some of the other packages that would be needed, etc.

Regards...

You might want to look at Vector Linux, which is a Slackware based distro designed for pretty much your exact situation.

http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php...ibution=vector

I've used Slackware 9.0 with an old box (Compaq Armada with Pentium 166mhz, 32 RAM) and I was pretty happy with its speed using a light gui (I've used blackbox) Simply forget heavy programs such as OpenOffice (you can use, but will take a life time to open) or Mozilla/Netscape (use Dillo and Sylpheed and you will do great). Again, I'm pretty impressed with Slackware's performance in that machine :). If you cut down the installation, you might get a nice running system between 500 - 700 megas, including blackbox (you can get a precompiled package of black/fluxbox at Slackware homepage/ftp ).

Good luck!

as for what packages to keep and what to dump, I would go with the suggestion of using a pre-made distro that allready has this done for you...

But if you want to customize things, I would 1st dump all the server packages if you don't intend to use a server... dump all the documentation and use online docs instead.

Dump Gnome and KDE since they're big and going to be pretty slow on a 133 anyway... install X windows with Fluxbox/blackbox as your GUI instead.

Dump the word processors you don't intend to use.. if you do need something more than notepad/wordpad then you can check out open office or abi word and find which is smaller and install it...

as for mutimedia, I'd keep Xine and XMMS.. probably also MPlayer.. dump the rest...

You only need 1 browser, so I'd think about keeping firebird/mozilla and dumping the others...

have you tried the "live" distros like knoppix or mepis? They fit on a CD... so I'd assume you can install them to a 1GB HDD.

Thanks All
I think Ill have a try of Vector, seems to fit the bill.