GO with Tiny Linux, it only takes 50 - 80 megs of harddrive space and should work with your specs. Just trust me, great to start with. If you want to learn without dedicating a partition, check out floppix. It is a linux distro aimed at teaching newbies. It fits on two floppy disks, doesn't allow any interaction with the harddrive so you can't mess anything up., and their website has a great list of tutorials. Go to floppix.com, download floppix, then click on the LABS tab at the top of their webpage. That will teach you pretty much everything you need to know about command line Linux.

I am the Tiny Linux, TinyX, floppix advocate. Where there's a need, where there's a brand spankin' newbie, I'll be there.

how do I install de splittet ZIPSLACK??

In the readme they say: use Pkzip
but in the same line they say: you can't use pkzip...
wich program can I use to unzip the splittet zipslack on msdos-command-line??

I think they meant not to use the DOS pkzip.

but which prog should I use in dos?
because I have only dos!

Well in the zipslack faq they recomended using a linux boot disk.

They're just saying to use an extraction tool that will support lfns. I think pkunzip 2.50 will work - just not 2.04g and such. Not positive, but that's the idea the Slack site's trying to get across. I burned it to a CD and installed from there, so I don't know but if you don't have that option, just give it a shot with 2.50 or, as aaa said, try booting with Linux. I'd imagine that'd include *nix unzipping tools that would work.

I tried to boot a really small linux with needs only 4 or 8 MB ram but it doesn't work! Not enough buffer... WHY!?!?
The computer I want to install linux has 16MB ram

What was your "really small linux" called? What was the error you got?

Theres this one distro called basic linux, it can be run on 4MB RAM, heres the webpage
http://hetteh.iq.pl/bl/ <- this one
It says that there is not enough free buffer space

That's weird. 1.8 runs a 486SX with 8MB fine. I've never seen that message before. Are you sure that computer will boot *anything*? I forget what I did... man, my memory sucks. You download a couple floppies worth of stuff to a DOS partition and unzip it and type 'boot' right? You are doing this from DOS or real DOS-mode on a 9x system, right? Then, if you want, you can write the contents of the RAMdisk to a separate partition on your hard drive, download and install and run LILO, and your good to go. I think...

Or did you try the two boot floppies method? I did that as well. Seems like I had to monkey wth the batch files, though, because they made some incorrect assumptions. Not sure. Provide more information, please.

I've got Grey Cat Linux 3.0 (based on Slackware 3.5) up and running on my old 486 with 8 MB RAM. It works in command line mode, but I can't get the GUI to start. I would appreciate any suggestions. I'm new at Linux, so the error messages don't make much sense and I'm not sure where to go to find out about them.

To set up the GUI, I ran xf86config which asked a lot of incomprehensible questions. I guessed at some of them and took the default on most of them. Then I started STARTX and here is what it said:

execve failed for /usr/X11R6/bin/X (errno 2)
_X11TransSocketUNIXConnect: errno=11
giving up
xinit:Connection refused (errorno 111): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): server error

I assume that I answered some question wrong in xf86config, but have no idea what it is. Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can track this down or what to do about it?

Thanks for any response.

what's you video card, monitor, mouse, and keyboard?

Basic Linux

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis...ions/baslinux/

BasicLinux is a mini-Linux that runs in a 4mb ramdisk. It has a fully-featured shell, an easy-to-use editor, and a variety of useful utilities. In particular, BasicLinux is well equipped for internet use: it can dial an ISP, browse the web, send/receive mail, and download files.
BasicLinux is a good distribution for an old 486. It is much leaner than RedHat and performs better on old hardware. Although BasicLinux initially runs on a ramdisk, it can be installed to its own HD partition, where additional packages can be added (including X and GCC).

Responding to GYRM:
what's your video card, monitor, mouse, and keyboard?

Everything except monitor is original Gateway 2000 stuff:
Video card: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430, BIOS version 1.22, 1 MB video memory
Monitor: KDS 24 x 80 (I had to replace the Gateway monitor)
Mouse: Microsoft two button
Keyboard: original Gateway keyboard - nothing fancy or new
Is there anything else that you need to know?

Do you have the horizontal and vertical refresh rates for the monitor or maybe a model number and the version of X that you are using to check if it supports your video card chipset?