P100 w 32mb Ram.... which OS?

[Evil-Elmo]

Hey, I have an old P100 with 32mb ram (was 7331 in it's day, my dad was like 'isn't 32mb ram a bit of an overkill?'), a 3.2gb HDD and a 2mb matrox mystique. Since it's just sitting there, and i know it works sweet as, I figured I should chuck something on it to have a play around. Now, I haven't had any experience with linux or basically anything that's not dos/windows based. But I am game to try something out.... so suggestions welcome!

[Antallica]

OS/2 hahahaha

But I don't see much that will run good on that rig..... perhaps an OLD version of the 'nix.

But linux alone will take up to a GB anyway... so put on Win3.11 and learn what stability really is ;)

[Sodge]

Well you could put 98 on it like our school has on its p100's i has on one t'day, during computer science and well, lets just put it this way I could post one reply on the forums yeah time the comp was booted, if I tried a second time, it would have an error about not enough ram, and my mate couldn't even attach a 16kb file to an e-mail :mad: :o

but more to the point you should got for linux ;) thats my vote for that old pos :D

[Agent666]

win 95/98 will work on it if you have all the drivers.....

[Evil-Elmo]

Yea, I was trying to steer away from windows, it has win '95 on it at the moment, but I want to play around with something different.
Are there old versions of linux that would run on it? Taking up 1gb isn't a problem, it's not like I need that hdd space.

[varkk]

Well, there is slackware, or an early RH/mandrake or do a custom install of the latest from the major distro's without most of the packages like open office etc, although even the window managers may be a bit much for the old thing. or you could try to build your own by downloading the kernel and building from there. Would be hard but fun, and you'd know all kinds of linux stuff by the end. There is also one of the BSDs or even minix, OS/2...The list goes on and on and on

[Artifice]

windows 95 went really fast on my brothers 686, ~= p200
but if you cant go with that try win 3.11 or maybe freebsd...
the problem of course with strange machinery is finding the drivers.

[sparkles]

if you are new to linux etc, then an early version of redhat could be one of your best bets: somehting like version 6.2 (version 6 core, but more stable :) ).

another possiblity would be an early version of mandrake... mandrake has kinda died in recent times, but a few years ago was renowned for being pretty easy to get up and going.

if you wanna hand getting hold of ealier distributions, i'm pretty sure that i have a few floating around somewhere....

[fatsanchez]

if you want a GUI and the box to actually be useful, then win95, or better still NT4 is your best bet (might want some more ram though)

if not, then give slackware a go, recompile the kernel to get rid of all the junk and it should be reasonably quick at the console (dont even try X).

[Afflon]

Originally posted by fatsanchez
if you want a GUI and the box to actually be useful, then win95, or better still NT4 is your best bet (might want some more ram though)

if not, then give slackware a go, recompile the kernel to get rid of all the junk and it should be reasonably quick at the console (dont even try X).

I have to agree. Same with sparkles, RH6.2 but on a 100 don't bother with a GUI - I've tried and it's just too slow, my proxy is a P166 (S - no MMX) with 32 MB ram running RH6.2 SERVER (dual win98 for this and that) I have a couple of copies of this and that. Alternatively do a dual boot install on your main rig with one of the later Distros. I'm LOVING RH9 :D

[davydz]

I suggest trying win98 lite. It has explorer removed allowing you to use a less resource hungry browser.:) (Less crash happy another good benifit of no explorer)
And microsoft said it couldnt happen:p

[sparkles]

hmmm, i think that slackware without x would be a sure fire way to get a linux noob to forever use windows~!

not the best introduction, but certainly better than win95.

win98 lite could be an option, but, well, i had win98se running ok on a p133 not all that long ago...

so if you want another windows box, then 98se would be my choice, otherwise slackware or redhat....

[Oblivian]

Originally posted by fatsanchez
if not, then give slackware a go, recompile the kernel to get rid of all the junk and it should be reasonably quick at the console (dont even try X).

learned this the hardway :) P200MMX/32Mb/2Gb X = teh slow!

Swap partition was maxed out at all times (8mins to boot), not to mention the fact its got an old S3 card that had res/colour issues.

Now I'm n00bing it in Debian 3 Console (told its nix for morons).

*attempting* to make it a WiFI router branched off my main LAN on a diff subnet.

[sparkles]

Originally posted by Oblivian
learned this the hardway :) P200MMX/32Mb/2Gb X = teh slow!


HA! and HA again!

running rh8 on a p4 2.4 w 512mb ram + 40gig hd => X = teh slow!

criticise as you wish the ms policy if caching the hell out of everything (and given teh dodgy power outages we've been getting at home lately i will), but god damn it makes things fast!

[mird-OC]

if you want a gui, use 98+98lite... if you're into fun with consoles, try a lunix distribution of your choice.

[sparkles]

Originally posted by mird-OC
if you're into fun with consoles

now that would be such a great section on a tv show.... :D

[Grrr!!]

Win98se IMHO is the best bet.

It'll run fine; and most of the drivers will be installed automatically.

[varkk]

Originally posted by sparkles
HA! and HA again!

running rh8 on a p4 2.4 w 512mb ram + 40gig hd => X = teh slow!


Running RH9 on a p4 1.8 w 512 (80gig :p) and X is running sweet as with full pretties, if you have an Nvidia card, get the latest dets for linux. (as if you would run windows without installing the proper video dirvers!)

[VERT]

I had Win2K running on a P133 with 32mb, explorer did not run on it though but it ran well enough for internet sharing to work.

[dorky]

Ive installed mandrake v6.5 on a computer via network install to a p100, 32mb, 2.5gb box and it worked fine on friends home setup, also ive just installed peanut linux on a *cough* compaq desktop pro 4000 (32mb...) and it isquite cool!! lol check it out -> peanutlinux (http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut/)


download iso -340mb - (http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/peanut/current/iso/)

[haytona]

try windowmaker as a light weight alternative to kde or gnome.

[FKF]

Yep, try peanut linux, seems to work well on older PCs.

Or if you are feeling masochistic, try NT4. If you can make it work successfully you should be pretty much set for any NT based version of windows ever. i.e. NT4 is a b*tch.

Or NT3.51 for a real blast from the past. Should fly on that machine too.