[NTLUG:Discuss] 486SX Distro

[mike]

Here's the best distro's I found for a 486 box. 

SuSE ______________________

SuSE 6.x was built for 386 systems (should run on a 486sx.)  On the paid 
version (the 6 CD set) there is a package 'xdmsc' under the basic X package 
area.  If you select only that package (along with an Xserver like SVGA) and 
let the dependencies work themselves out, You'll end up with an xterminal (as 
in box to connect to a remote server.) Using this method, I had a working 
Xterminal with a 486dx 66 on 16 meg of ram, and a 400meg hard drive (there 
was gobs of space left on the drive.) Performance of the box seemed more 
limited by the network (10meg ethernet) than by processor speed.  You should 
be able to find a suse 6.x retail package around somewhere on the cheap (like 
5 bucks in half price books....)  Note: to accomplish this, you'll need to 
boot from CD 2 on versions higher than 6.2, and the secret SuSE commands 
you'll need are 'Sax' and 'yast'. 

Peanut Linux _______________

I was going to recommend Peanut Linux. BUT... I just checked, and their 
latest version (9.3) calls for at least a 486DX processor.   If you can find 
Peanut linux 9.2 it only requires a 386 processor.  If you have DSL, go ahead 
and download it, and let me know if it's as good as they are claiming now 
(last time I looked at Peanut it was in the 2.x versions.)  I'm still looking 
for a way to keep 3 486dx 50 laptops in use (as standalone tools + email 
grabbers.) 

http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut/

Mandrake __________________

You may check out mandrake's 486 version (available for download only)

http://www.mandrake.com 

It ran great on my desktops, but I couldn't get it onto a laptop (no pcmcia 
support in the install... they have pcmcia support, but you can't install 
from a pcmcia cdrom drive.)  I was using low end 486DX systems tho, so again 
you may have different results with an SX.  And its getting fairly dated 
(7.0.2, ran kde 1.2 , netscape 4.5 (with netscape 3 included) etc..)

About Your System ___________

A 486SX is a broken 486DX chip. If only 486 processor is listed for 
compability, your chances of success are lower (70% of the time an SX will 
still work.) This is referring to intel, if you're using a Cyrix or IBM 486sl 
or sx (which are the only folks that made 100mhz flavors i think,) you really 
have the equivalent of a very fast 386sx and linux won't run on it. I 
actually had linux boot on a 386sx, but 386sx chips have no mathcoprocessor 
built in, so linux runs at 1/10th the speed on these chips than on 386DX 
chips of the same speed. (and 40mhz was already SLOOOW for X)  Even if you 
can keep it from crashing, you don't end up with a running system, but one 
that wriggles along slowly (like an earthworm.)

To save yourself lots of headache trying to figure out why the box keeps 
freezing, I'd recommend trying to upgrade to a DX first, or getting a 486DX 
box to attempt this project on.  In fact I might have one around you can 
have.  free. if I haven't tossed it already.

Good luck. 


> "Paul Ingendorf" <pauldy at wantek.net> wrote:
> > I'm looking for a distro that will support a 486SX 100 with X windows on
> > 16mb of ram.  :-)  I know the constraints make this a tough system to
> > work with which is why I thought I would post this as a question to the