which Linux distro would run on a 486 or a pentium 200 (even with MMX)

[Henry Spencer]

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004, Simon Tonekham wrote:
> I was just wondering, which linux distro would run on a 486 with 4
> to 8MB of RAM with 1GB hard drive or maybe a Pentium 200 (even with MMX
> technology) with 16MB of RAM and 2GB hard drive... surfing the internet
> and doing [word] processing tasks.

Depends greatly on whether you are thinking of using a graphical browser
(Netscape, etc etc) and/or a word processor with a graphic interface (Open
Office, etc).  Those memories are rather small for modern graphics stuff,
I'm afraid, unless the actual *screen* (and hence the X server) is on
another machine.  (In that case, the 16MB MMX-200, at least, should be
okay for browsing, although Open Office might be asking too much.)

If you're happy with a text-only world, those remain passable machines. 
With a 2GB disk, it will be necessary to be a little selective about what
parts of the distribution get included; with a 1GB disk, you'll have to be
quite selective. 

One remaining issue is whether you insist on the latest release of a
particular distro.  The advantage is that it will be reasonably current on
security patches, while an older release will have to be updated carefully
before exposing it to the Internet.  The disadvantage is that almost all
the distros have gained weight over time, and the older releases will run
well on machines that have trouble with the current ones. 

If an old distro is acceptable, in particular, Red Hat 7.2 runs quite well
on small slow machines.  It often even runs graphics reasonably well, if a
bit slowly, provided the screen and X server are elsewhere.  (I speak from
considerable experience on this.)  But you do need the security patches...

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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