Old i486 Laptop (33Mhz, 20MB RAM) - Which distro do you recommend?

Not a live CD in any case, no KDE either. So anything that works, I'd personally go Debian way and use a net install to install a minimal system and then "apt-get install fluxbox"

But actually I'd rather look for a better system in the trash somewhere... 33MHz!!! Man, that's close to my first system... and that was 17 years ago! I'm sure you could find somebody who doesn't know how to recycle their PC that might even pay you to take their system anyway and that PC might be 10x faster.
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Damn Small Linux
Puppy
MepisLite 3.3.1-1

Actually the smallest footprint linux I ever
installed was Vector Linux 1.8
on a laptop no less...

I doubt even DSL will boot up on such system, remember that Live CDs need more memory than normal installation. Moreover is kind of useless, what would you want to use such a system for? If you want to command some lights to turn on and off, or something like that it would be fine, more than that, like Internet browsing and stuff it would be painful.

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http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Minimum_Hardware_Requirements

Well.. it looks like this would work though.

DSL with X-windows

And a testimony:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/90

So I have to stand corrected.

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thanks. I bought this Computer in 1994 for 2000 Dollars .
It was a nice machine at its time. And i still keep it, why throw it away if it is still usable for some tasks.

MEPIS Linux 6.0
DFI AK74-AC Mainboard
AMD Athlon "Thunderbird" 750Mhz
3Dfx Voodoo 3 2000 AGP 16 Mb
384 MB SDRAM (PC133)
60 GB Seagate Barracuda
80 Western Digital Caviar
MSI CD-ROM 52X
Mitsumi CR 2801 TE CD/R

It connects to the Internet with a router or over a host computer. sometimes over its built in modem. It´s working fine since the dockingmodul has a 10Mbit LAN card.
As i said: i will continue using it for simple text processing, email and fax. like in the past years .

MEPIS Linux 6.0
DFI AK74-AC Mainboard
AMD Athlon "Thunderbird" 750Mhz
3Dfx Voodoo 3 2000 AGP 16 Mb
384 MB SDRAM (PC133)
60 GB Seagate Barracuda
80 Western Digital Caviar
MSI CD-ROM 52X
Mitsumi CR 2801 TE CD/R

so 3 were mentioned:

Damn Small Linux
Puppy
MepisLite 3.3.1-1

the first one sound best. Mepis 3.3. on this machine? i doubt it..but will read their docs.

anyways Damn small linux sounds good, thank you for your suggestions, i will try it out! if there is someone who has experience in installaing Linux on a 486, let me know.

thanks.

by the way Adrian,
if you are a real linux user you shouldn´t laugh at me
it is one of the qualities of linux that it runs even on old computers (foer example damn small linux). linux gives new life to old computers and is not like windows who wants you to buy a new computer, harddisk, cpu blabla with every new version of its crappy OS

P.s.: Just found it: Red Hat 6 on a Contura aero (486-25Mhz)
http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~masmith/aero/

Really great Linux The best finnish/european invention since the beer.

MEPIS Linux 6.0
DFI AK74-AC Mainboard
AMD Athlon "Thunderbird" 750Mhz
3Dfx Voodoo 3 2000 AGP 16 Mb
384 MB SDRAM (PC133)
60 GB Seagate Barracuda
80 Western Digital Caviar
MSI CD-ROM 52X
Mitsumi CR 2801 TE CD/R

I'm not laughing at you

If you can live with 33MHz then I tip my hat to you. Let me know how DSL works on it.
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Give DeLi linux a go

"DeLi Linux stands for "Desktop Light" Linux. It is a Linux Distribution for old computers, from 486 to Pentium MMX 166 or so. It's focused on desktop usage. It includes email clients, graphical web browser, an office package with word processor and spreadsheet, and so on. A full install, including XOrg and development tools, needs not more than 350 MB of harddisk space.

The trick is, that DeLi Linux uses only "lightweight" alternative software. If you are looking for the newest KDE, GNOME or Mozilla, DeLi Linux will not make you happy. The test computer is a 486 laptop with 16 MB RAM, and all apps which comes with DeLi Linux are running smoothly."

http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

I've got an old 386 (33mhz) that I still use from time to time.

It's got 4MB of RAM, and runs like "greased lighting" (I think it's the fastest PC I've got at booting, starting Windows, and loading applications). I'm running Windows 3.1 on it right now, and it's a real screamer (really). It's got Ami Pro, an old version of MS Office on it and much more. It runs circles around every other desktop I've got, including my newest 3GHZ P4 with 1GB of RAM. Of course, forget compatibility with newer stuff. I use it mostly to keep some older DOS apps updated that I developed years ago, since my development environment for them is on it. lol

But, I've never tried to run anything other than Windows on it (3.1 right now).

So, I'd be curious as to what alternatives it may be capable of running, too.

Will any of the Linux distros mentioned run OK in 4MB of RAM on a 386?

Jim C.