I've got an old Compaq Presario that's been sitting in my closet for years. It's got 1445 MB of disk space and 32 MB of RAM. Currently it's running Windows 95. I'd like to try running Linux on this thing just for fun.

I'm thinking of giving Damn Small Linux a shot, but I'd also like to see how it handles Slackware. I'm a relative newcomer to Slackware, having only used it for a year or so, so maybe someone else could advise me on roughly how far back I should go (what version number?) when trying to get this thing running.

Owch. 32 MB is pretty tight for a system. You may be able to get Slackware 10.1 running with that, though. Keep in mind that 10.1 was released in 2005 - it still uses Linux 2.4.

You might be able to find a bigger harddrive and memory on eBay?
I would think that a bare minimum (with no X) would be some 256M of memory (128M might do) and a 3 giga hd ...
I used to have a long-time file-server (went untouched for about 5 yrs) with 256M of memory and a 10 giga disk (also a 250G usb-disk) - it was running slackware 10.1 ...

Back in those days, I started with Slackware 10.0 on an IBM PC 300 (one of the original Pentiums) with 312 MB RAMs.

The minimum requirements for v. 10.0 specify 16 MB RAM. For 10.1, it was 32 MB.

Frankly, I don't think this would be worth the effort unless you want to do it just for fun. When you do things for fun with computers, they are always worth the effort, because you learn stuff along the way.

If he pared down the packages he installed (for instance, not installing X at all) he may be able to keep the hard drive cost down. After that, he could use swap space to help with memory, though I admit that a system that pared down will have trouble doing anything useful. I assumed that would be okay because he's not trying to do serious work on it, he's just playing.

I'm not sure why he'd buy memory for a machine this old. A gig of DDR1 memory runs around $20 these days - he might as well pick up a raspberry pi.

This project is definitely just for fun. I'm certainly not going to spend any money to update this old machine. I've got a modern ThinkPad running Slackware 14.0 with plenty of processor power and memory for my daily computing needs.
Based on this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...9380bd631e.png (from the Slackware wikipedia page), I was expecting to probably have to go back to version 3 or maybe 2. (based simply on the fact that the laptop is running windows 95, and Slackware 2.2 came out in early '95)
But I'll take a closer look at 10 and 10.1.

Thanks.

Not Slackware

http://kolibrios.org/en/

I'd use the last version of zipslack for that. The minimum RAM mentioned in the above-linked HOWTO's refers to the RAM needed for the installer. Once installed, the resulting system can easily run in 32MB of RAM. I had a machine with similar specs which worked fine that way, but I needed to add at least 16MB of swap space in oredr to avoid crashing when running opera with more than two tabs open...

If you can get the hard drive out, then you could install a much newer version as a regular installation -maybe even current -but you'd have to dispense with anything but the lightest GUI environments. fluxbox or wmaker will both work fine with such specs. My system used wmaker and the old gtk-1.2 rox-filer. That old thing still booted faster than my wifes' current 1GHz 64-bit opensuse box....

Hmm, in that case you might be able to use a hacky method to install without using the full installer:

1. Boot Slackware install media
2. Partition your disk
3. Mount your intended / under /mnt along with any other partitions
4. installpkg --terse --root /mnt [path to the selection of Slackware packages you want to install]
5. Use mount to bind /dev /proc /sys to their /mnt equivalents
6. chroot to /mnt
7. Make an /etc/fstab
8. Create /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap (only if you need a non US layout)
9. run passwd
10. Run pkgtool and select 'Setup' and then run the sections you require
11. Exit chroot and shutdown

The bit that could potentially fail is when running pkgtool/Setup as these might be the steps with the higher memory requirements (which is why you are avoiding the installer) but in this case you could do any of those steps manually, e.g. make an /etc/lilo.conf and run lilo, hand configure /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf, etc.

Assuming this works you should then be able to boot using the disk you had previously mounted under /mnt

P.S. The above is like the Archlinux-like method of installing Slackware (ever since they removed their installer from their install media).

The current version of OpenWRT x86 should run just fine.

I'd definitely use Slitaz on this type of low-spec hardware. Here's the documentation for low RAM:

http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:lowramcd

openwrt? for a desktop/laptop? du machst spass oder? O.o

The specs of that win95 laptop roughly represent the memory constraints of current embedded systems. So a busybox/uclib system with a recent kernel is the obvious choice. OpenWRT is a easy to install embedded Linux distribution with a lot of prebuilt packages available.

You could also try NetBSD. :-)

I have old hardware here: a 486 class with a 100 MHz Cyrix hybrid with 16 MB RAM, a PI class with a 400 MHz K6-III+ with 256 MB RAM, and 350 MHz PII with 448 RAM.

On the 486 I gave up running anything other then WFWG 3.11. I have the TCP stack installed on WFWG and the system connects to my home network just fine.

I have Slackware 11.0 installed but avoid running anything other than WFWG because I lack the patience. Too many bottlenecks.

I had Slitaz on the 486 but overall I found that Linux does not do well on a 486 system. Just. too. damned. slow. Unlike the 16-bit WFWG, Linux coughs and spits endlessly with only 16 MB RAM, even with a 1GB swap partition.

Although the 486 is a 32-bit processor, everything else is 16-bit or 8-bit. WFWG is a 16-bit OS and handles the 486 exceptionally well.

The PI/PII machines fare better running Slackware. I have 14.0 installed on both. The hard drive, FSB, and network speeds are bottlenecks. I can't run any dedicated desktop environment without severely testing my patience, including Trinity and Xfce.

About once a month I power on these two machines to update security patches. Takes. a. long. time. Sadly, NT4 still runs the fastest on these two machines.

The real killer for any of these machines is graphics and video. Basic web browsing will test the patience of saints, let alone trying to play videos or flash.

If you limit your expectations of an older machine to the software from the pre world wide web 1990s, then likely you'll be happy with your tinkering. If you try to push anything graphics or video, then you'll set yourself up for a lot of frustration and disappointment.

An old Pentuim (which is the best I'd expect with a win95 machine) wont even be using DDR1, it will be SD-RAM (very late model MMX machines mainly) or EDO/Fast Page RAM.

Apart from a few 'server' chipsets (NX, HX) max memory on pentium level machines is typically 256MB (TX) or 128MB (MX, FX. VX). It might be possible to find 128MB EDO for under $30....not worth it at all IMO when the raspberry pi is so cheap and would be faster everywhere.