Re: tlug: laptop

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Wed, 18 Nov 1998, Eric S. Standlee wrote:

> I have an old 486 Laptop with Win3.1 on a 170 MB HD and probably 8 MB RAM
> with B&W LCD made by Magitronic.
> 
> Can I get any version of Linux on it?

Yes, but forget X.  The disk isn't big enough to install it, and it won't work
well (maybe not at all) in 8 meg.  If X will even run, it will be extremely
slow, because pretty much all of that memory will be already spoken for,
without even bringing any applications into the picture.  You'd be thrashing
heavily all the time.

> I tried Debian, but could only get the basics (no X) going.  I tried to
> load RH, but the 5.1 images seemed not to work...  YUCK!

If Debian works, you might want to go with Debian.  When you say the RH 5.1
images don't work, what exactly do you mean happened?  Slackware (even the new
version) is still libc5-based, so you probably don't want to go that way; the
world is moving to glibc.

> I don't need advocacy, I need answers.  On this antique, do I have to go
> to one of the smaller distributions, or should I go to slack?  Or, would
> using a nullmodem network transferring them be quicker?

I'm getting the impression this machine has no PC Card slot that you can put
an Ethernet card in.  In that case, you are really limited.  An install is
going to take quite a while no matter what.  On the nullmodem Vs. floppy
install question, well, both will be slow.  If the maximum transfer rate of
your serial port is 115200, there might not be a great difference.  The floppy
is probably faster, but a nullmodem install would have the benefit of not
having to shuffle disks or risk getting a bad one.  If the max. port speed is
57600 or slower, you might want to go with the floppy install.

However, do any Linux distributions give an option of installing across a null
modem cable?  

Overall, it sounds like this will be of more use as an exercise to see if it
can be done than as a machine to actually be used.  It will be OK for use as a
text mode editor that you can carry around and write programs with wherever
you happen to be (preferably near a power outlet :-)  ), but not much more.
If you really need a notebook machine and want to run X, I would recommend a
much newer machine.

This might be a more workable project using one of the "Linux on a floppy"
distributions, but I don't have any information on those.  One is called
Trinux (can't find the URL) and Scott has come up with a very tiny version of
TurboLinux, but I don't know if this is something being generally released or
not.

Cheers,

Jonathan

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