[Nottingham] Small, old laptop - any options?

[Joe Wrigley]

512Mb HDD might be a bit of a squeeze for most full size distributions but
you can certainly install some form of Linux on there. My old gateway ran
Debian on a P75 with a 1GB disk. The RAM's a bit low, probably, but I had
various boot-from-floppy distributions working on my old Thinkpad with 4MB
of RAM and a 386 processor.

If it has a PCMCIA slot, you could probably put a network card in there,
Debian's installer certainly works with the one I use. I would suggest
maybe try out debian using the Sarge installer floppies (I seem to
remember I only needed two rather than Woody's 6) and if you can't fit it
on that disk then damn small linux or something similar.

Don't know if that's any use,

Joe

> HDD is now on the way (the old one is making nasty noises), but as a side
> effect I've 'inherited' a very old laptop.
>
> Spec: P100, 512Mb HDD, 16Mb RAM.  Floppy   n no network port.
> Win95
> and Office 95.
>
> If this machine is going to be any use, it has to be networkable - but
> Win95
> and wireless networking don't seem to go together.  If it can network, it
> can
> replace the heap of junk which is upstairs in a son's room and on which
> the
> monitor's failed...)  All he wants is WP, spreadsheet and Internet use.
>
> So, will Linux work on that low a spec (specifically the RAM - 512Mb HDD
> is
> pretty tiny, but it looks as though Damn Small Linux for one would be
> happy
> in it, and there are probably others...)?  And how, with no CD and no
> network
> capability until somthing's installed, would I install it anyway?
>
> --
> David Aldred
>
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