If you computer has a network connection, just install debian without a gui and install X with i3. super light setup .
wait.... why bother with a computer that old???? For fun or do you actually need to use the machine for something?
Just about the only Linux Distro I can think of that would be happy on such old hardware would be DSL. If you are brave snappy core or one of the newer distros for embedded systems. I would imagine a very steep learning curve.
Hahahha, considering hardware support has been dropped on 98% of OS's and windows doesnt support it. "just work" isnt really a fair statement. Linux "just works" for any standard desktop setup built in this millennium.
By Dje4321 make two good points
1)
Lubuntu with Force PAE is a good options, if you think is diffculty you should watch the vid
I reckon that looks pretty easy. and once you have installed you add the force command to grub and you should be able to boot no worries
2)
Debian install will work but you will need to compile a custom kernel.
3)
this project is do-able how much work are you will to put into it ? There might be a couple options
- http://www.slitaz.org/en/get/ this distro still provide floppy img for old pc's that don't have a cd drive. It could be a go-er
- If you are able to boot into live enviroment. You can install linux manually via process called "Chroot"
-Another option is FreeBSD supports old i386, and here you kernel will auto built for you but you will need to just the BSD terminal/shell which is BASH but some command are different. Then you simple install a desktop environment
https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/i386.html
PAE error shouldn't a critical error because you our need PAE if you are address more the 4g ram, because it is a 32bit number limitation.
Minix? Or if you can find it online Plan 9, I ran Plan 9 on a 486 as well as slackware 1.08 something.....this was 20 years ago. Back in the day all unix's were posix compliant meaning commands meant the same thing from one unix to another. Minix is a learning OS and was the inspiration for Linux. Some french site I found a while back had windows nt 4.0 and WFW 3.11 but I lost the bookmark when I wiped my drive. They even have a Minix that will work on an 8088 and ran it on a 5150 I had. Messing around with older PC's is fun and worry free:)
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On a packard bell? Good bloody luck those things are the most budget computers ever designed. When the Pentium 2 machines were out everywhere they were still selling 486DX machines.
If you really want to use this machine, for some.... stupid reason, go get the latest version of puppy, black out the hard drive and format it to whatever you want (I would do XFS or JFS), and just run the OS off the USB or CD. Then you can use the hard drive as all storage. Puppy is a pain in the ass to install anyways. I never understood what the hell the installer said and I actually installed it once accidentally and could never do it again.
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OS2 warp?
DOS based OS Microsoft stole from IBM
+1 to netBSD and Minix
.
Someone suggested Plan 9,
That would be cool, basically it is the next operating system that Bell Labs invented after Unix.
It doesn't have a terminal per say, it was invented to have its own graphically environment by default. But it is out dated now.
But it is a esoteric Operating Sys and it probably above my skill level.
os2 warp would be fun however I'm gonna skip it , for the same reason I'm skipping beos , just lack of drivers for the machine. I find that linux and windows xp seems to come bundles with enough generic drivers to run pretty much anything at all , but beod and os2 warp are old enough where they don't actually support the very proprietary at the time packard bell hardware.
I'll have to check out minix
Old thing I'd be worried about there is they are installing it on a machine that DOES have PAE support but simply doesn't list it so to speak. The pentium M is much more modern than the 233 pentium mmx but I'll have to try it anyway just to see if it works. Lubuntu looked the most promising from an "easy to install" standpoint.
Install errors. He boots off of CD and storage is onHDD.
Read posts for once before bombing threads in your usual fashion.
I feel you on that. This thread has been fun thinking up low resource esoteric Operating Systems. Haiku is a modernize open source version of BeOS. You can turn off PAE from what I understand. I have only ran it in a VM so I have no clue if it will work.
Well OpenBSD is a good shot, but I was researching around and found Alpine Linux, I have no idea if needs PAE support but it is the only one boasting that it can run with only 8mbs of ram it probably meant to give life to systems like yours so give it a shot.
http://www.alpinelinux.org/about/
This the only linux distro that probably can work out, if not go OBSD or just put her to rest.
OK,
Well enough talk lets try somethings out, and hopefully we can then get some specific errors to troubleshoot.
I will just as soon as I buy more blank cds! Wish my local store here had cdrw's. lol. I'm just burning up tons of regular cdrs , but at least they're cheap. And I'm getting a huge stock of linux distros that will work on other machines probably.
That looks like it could work. Beos was very ahead of it's time and I dream of the day this machine is capable of moving a window across the screen rather than just a window frame
Just install fedora.
Fedora 8......
Machine: Packard Bell m415
If Google is about right and the Machine in question is REALLY a Intel Pentium MMX/166 based system (LOL?!) ... I think you have two options ...
The last time I installed Linux on such a dinosaur of computing history was as SuSE Linux 6.3 was the hot thang in town. Not sure if there's an FTP mirror out there which still holds copies of either SuSE Linux 6.x/7.x (maybe you could try 8.x - that should be old enough to) or Red Hat Linux 5.x/6.x ... if the system really is what Google says it is you're definitely looking for VERY old Linux distros (Kernel 2.2/2.4/2.6 based).
Put that thing out of its misery and get yourself a Raspberry Pi 2 - that thing has more oomph and RAM than a P1 MMX/166 with, in best case, 128MB RAM max will ever have.