Hi,

Does anyone know of a full linux installation that can be installed on a 4.86GB HDD ?

It doesnt have to be full. I am fine with CLI.

Hi! AntiX seems to be the popular one. "full"? DistroWatch! I like nano/ttylinux
In LQsearch, under Keywords, pull-down "Search Titles Only". Interesting megaThread/site

How much RAM? Do you need a popular 'package manager', like dpkg/deb?
Do you specifically want NO-GUI? Network (wifi?) and Video card model?

Best wishes... Let us know what you choose and how it goes!

AntiX is what I use, it can be installed in less, but using the GUI installer, it likes to have 4GB available, but is only about 2.5GB when the 'full' version is installed leaving room for your files.
http://antix.mepis.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Earlydayrambler,

Yet another vote for antiX-16.

This video may be helpful to you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Aw2zzBE-g

I often install Linux on machines with 512Meg hard drives. 4G+ is not very limiting.
The limiting factors are more likely to be memory and cpu.
I would like to know more about that hardware before asserting that I know a "best answer" for you. Keep that in mind when considering the following suggestions.

Just stay away from the large, bloated desktop distributions that attempt to load EVERYTHING. What you need is a somewhat minimal distribution that will not push that 4+Gb hard.

You might try TinyCore Linux, if a live-cd style will serve. Tiny is really incredibly small. Puppy Linux is also a live option that many people treasure.

If you need a direct install with expansion potential, Debian or one of its many offspring is always a good option. Just be sure to start with a minimal install and watch that drive space.

One thing I ALWAYS advise: researching the kind of distribution you need at DISTROWATCH.ORG is never wasted effort. Even if you do not find exactly what you want, you will learn about some of the most interesting distributions and maintainer groups on the planet. And if you DO find exactly what you needed, you go away both happy and well informed about the choices.

don't forget the live-USB distros, antiX, mx linux, and puppy-linux may be ok on your system running from a usb stick. those systems have live-usb with persistence files to use more like a regular system. all depends on your hardware (wpeckham ain't wrong )

I installed a Puppy Linux system on a 128MB sd card . My save files went onto a usb drive.

I run AntiX also and a base iso install will fit on a 4 gig drive just fine. Fluxbox window manager even so no need for just using cli./swap partition may take up a bit of room though. But you have not mentioned yet what this is going on to.

Jjanel,
It has 98mb ram and a 233mhz cpu. I like both dpkg and deb. I would prefer no GUI. It has a 16bit 10/100 pcmcia card that I would like to use for wifi. The video card model is a Neomagic MagicGraph128XD with 2MB.

fatmac,
If AntiX only needs 2.5GB of storage then I might as well try it!

beachboy2,
AntiX seems like a great solution!

wpeckham,
What distro do you install on 512mb machines? I'm interested to know! I posted my specs above. I am also going to try TinyCore.

dolphin oracle,
I'm also going to try puppy linix. I do plan on installing it to the hdd though.

rockytnji,
It seems like puppy linux and AntiX might fit my hdd. I am going to try Puppy, AntiX and TinyCore.

I plan on using this machine for IRC, Mutt email client, Lynx web browser. A gui would be nice so I could use dillo.

I would set my swap at 196mb, I dont think I would need more.

Years ago I had an IBM 380XD Thinkpad, P266, 96MB RAM, 10GB HD, & CD-ROM. I maxed the ram with whatever amount was the max and did a Debian netinstall. I installed Openbox & Fluxbox. It ran pretty good.

I installed CentOS v4 minimal and added the OpenVZ kernel and vz utilities to run OpenVZ containers. The install complained about having less than the recommended space and memory, but it worked anyway. Only two or three containers, but that was all I needed. NO GUI, because at the host level that is just wasted space and overhead. Manual network configuration, so no Network Manager: striping out X, NM, and all of the gui desktop and client stuff makes any distro a LOT smaller.

I doubt that would work with current versions, but there are other distributions that fit in less space.

I like dropping lots of live-cd ISO images onto an EASY2BOOT usb device so I can load up and test as many as I want. That might be something you could leverage.

LinuxBBQ does a text only distro, (amongst others), might be worth lookin at.
http://linuxbbq.org/

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...0/#post5651422

void linux I can get installed on a partition under 5GB. It is a striped down install iso. basic os with a GUI or net install without one.


a distro that you can decide everything you want installed onto your hdd before hand is required. As some if not most install things you'll never use. Therefore taking up space unnecessary.

I feel rather silly. My first question, way back in the beginning, should have been this:
What characteristics or functions constitute a "full linux installation" to you?


None of the suggestions here were bad, but we should know where the target is before we go pulling triggers blindly.

It may be possible to run almost any distro since you said command line. In fact minimal is way less than that. Usually the gui is a bit ticket number.

Since we have many live dvd's running full systems, you could consider it too although not exactly full install. They use compression to squash a virtual filesystem into a single file to save space. Could look at compressed filesystems too.

Above posts seem to all offer good ideas for choices.

I'd also look at something like SuseStudio too.