Antique Distros?

An anonymous reader asks: "I've got an old 486 that isn't doing anything (it has RedHat 6.2 on it and even that barely works), and I have been considering installing an even older distribution to make it more usable. I'm looking for something I can download still, has a good bit of programs, has X, and is still a relatively reasonable download for a 56K modem. I would like to download the distro with my new computer, then burn a CD or do something like that to install it on my old computer. The computer is a 486 at 33Mhz with 16MB RAM and a 1.5GB HDD. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated."

Comments

One option

[drdink]

Assuming you have more than 4 or 8MB of RAM, I would suggest try putting FreeBSD on it. You can download the FreeBSD ISOs here and if you get all 4 ISOs for FreeBSD 4.7, it will come with packages for a lot of the software you need eliminating more download needs.

2488MB may seem to be a big download for 56k, but remember that you are getting a fully working system with packages included. It used to be that all us suckers had to download huge stuff on 56k modems.

(waits to be modded down for mentioning *BSD.)