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

Best idea...

[ActiveSX]

Your best bet is to roll your own, following the instructions at Linux From Scratch. It takes some time, but you can squeeze every bit of performance out of that machine that way.

Early Slackware

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Would be your best bet. I've run it on just such a system. Can you say "recompile the kernel" I knew you could.

Re:Early Slackware

[Pyromage]

Why old? That's a waste: I have an old 486DX50mhz running slack 8.1 beautifully.

Re:Early Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll concur on this. My office's main network server is a P-60 with 16MB ram, and it runs an old slackware (4 I think, but I've upgraded it myself so much over the years). It runs like a charm.

I have another server that's even worse, a 486-dx2-66 with 16MB ram. I was having trouble compiling a current package with the ancient gcc, and rather than attempt to rebuild gcc I tried out newer distributions with it.

Red Hat 7.0 was so unbelievably slow getting booted and running after installation it was terrible. I then got out my heretofore-unused Slackware 7.1 disks and installed that as a test... it ran JUST AS FAST as the original installation of slackware did, despite being like five years newer.

(This was a few months ago, so no I didn't have current versions of slackware and redhat to test, and didn't feel like spending a week downloading the iso's, especially since slackware worked for me).

So my vote: slackware. Seriously.

Re:Early Slackware

[daaan]

I agree with the slackware 8.1 comment. I have a 486dx-66 with 16MB that sits in my closet and acts as a broadband router for the test of the network. It's an old DEC machine that runs beautifully, with i think 2 350MB harddisks in it.

The nice thing about slackware, not doing a lot of fancy hardware detection is that i was able to remove those disks, put them in a faster machine, install everything, recompile a kernel specifically for the 486, slap the disks back into the old cae and away I want. took less than an hour to get everything set up...

Start the flame wars

[noz]

I thought that was what Debian 386 (i.e. not x86) was for. :)

Um, slackware, I guess, but that's not the problem

[Cecil]

What's wrong with an old version of slackware? or heck, even a new version of slackware, I bet.

I installed slackware on a 486sx laptop with 4MB of RAM and only a floppy drive, (although they've since dispensed with the disksets) and it ran just fine. X was slow, but that's par for the course, deal with it.

Really, I don't see why the distribution matters as much as the software you're putting on it. I mean, if you install KDE, it's going to be dog-slow. That's KDE. Try installing blackbox or fvwm or even windowmaker: all fairly lightweight-but-usable window managers. Every distro has them (almost).

It's not a matter of picking an old enough distro, it's a matter of picking your software wisely. No, a "default install" will not cut it. You're going to have to be selective. If you're low on disk space, try nano, vi, jed or jove instead of emacs. as far as X-based edtiors go, you might as well forget about it. On a 486, even kedit is pretty heavyweight.

Try old Debian.

[molo]

Older Debian Distributions:

http://archive.debian.org/dists/

Don't use old tools

[Professor Collins]

By forcing yourself to downgrade to older system software, you are foolishly limiting yourself from running the hundreds of new and useful apps that have been released for Linux lately, most of which depend on the latest versions of the kernel and libc (or binary-compatible substitutes). Not to mention there are hundreds of security holes in old Linux distros that have only been patched in the latest versions of the included software.

I too faced this dilemma when trying to make use of a batch of 486 machines donated to our computer lab. My solution required a bit of elbow grease, but ensured that my machines both ran acceptably and had the latest and most secure versions of software available to them:

• I built a Gentoo Linux system on the Athlon XP 2000+ machine in the lab, targetting all the software for 486 (gcc -O3 -m486 -march=486 -fomit-frame-pointer -s) and building a very stripped-down 2.4 kernel with only the bare necessities. I also replaced the standard GNU shell tools with BusyBox and GNU libc with uC-libc. On this fast machine, the compilation cycle didn't take long, and I was able to build and install everything into a temporary /install directory in less than four hours.
• Once that was done, i tarred up the /install directory I had built and burned it onto an ISO along with a bootimage from tomsrtbt mini-Linux distro.
• I then booted each 486 machine in turn from the CD, and used a shellscript I had written which created an ext2 partition, formatted it, and untarred the contents of my custom gentoo setup onto the disk, and set up grub to boot into it.

With all this done, I was able to quickly and easily convert these seemingly worthless 486 machines into reasonable X terminals. Gentoo's e-merge infrastructure ensures that maintenance is easy, and that I have full control over the compilation process. This way, I can tailor every app to get maximum performance out of the limited but still substantial power of the 486 chip.

I just did this recently

[benjamindees]

with only 8 megs of RAM. I have finally gotten it to a usable point with FVWM and a custom, pared-down kernel.

I used Debian Slink, but I have access to a broadband internet connection. The X Configuration was a major pain. You should look into a mini distribution that comes with TinyX or something based on UCLibC if you really want the most bang for your download time. Remember, VesaFB is your friend.

I'm also looking for a distro specifically for old 486's, but I am yet to find one. I have run across this commercial OS, though, which is pretty cool.

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.)

Re:One option

[questionlp]

You don't have to download all four ISO images, but instead, you can download the mini ISO install image for FreeBSD 4.7 and use Ports to download and build the stuff that you need. You can also use CVSup to pull down the sources and enable compression over slower links.

The only problem is that the installer for the more recent FreeBSD versions require more than 8MB of RAM (12MB is the bare minimum I think). For firewall and/or router purposes, try out ClosedBSD which is based on PicoBSD (which in turn is based on an earlier release of FreeBSD). You can download the ISO from there.

For even a smaller install, NetBSD might do the trick, as well as OpenBSD.

One thing to be wary of

[Tim_F]

A lot of older distros (Mandrake and RedHat) will no longer be supported. So be wary if you're going to put this machine on the net. It may be very likely that there are security holes in some of the packages, and your machine could be easily hacked.

OpenBSD and NetBSD

[Ivan Raikov]

Assuming you have more than 4 or 8MB of RAM, I would suggest try putting FreeBSD [freebsd.org] on it.

I'd also suggest trying out OpenBSD; I've been running it on an old ThinkPad wtih 486/25MHz processor and 12 MB of RAM. I can run Emacs 20.x and the OpenSSH server on that machine, and still have about 6 - 8 MB of free RAM. I use it mostly as a type-writer, but GCC 2.95 is perfectly usable on it.

Re:What's the point?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Because it is there!

I'm seriously thinking about installing gentoo on a 486, 16MB, and just for grins, do it via floppy and dial-up. As long as the phone line stays up while I need it, I imagine I can get Gentoo installed in about one month.

Re:What's the point?

[glenstar]

You must not ever want to get laid again.

Ever.

My votes: Slackware 3.0, or perhaps Red Hat 4.2.

[JessLeah]

These distros were what I was using years and years hence. I recall running a stripped-down Slack 3.0 on a '386-16 laptop with 4MB of RAM and an 80MB HDD. (No kidding. It was an AT&T Safari-- remember those? If you squinted just right, you could swear the front of the case said "Satan" instead of "Safari". Or maybe that was the demons in my head taunting me. ;) )

Red Hat 4.2 used to run just dandy on desktops I had with around the level of hardware power you're talking about.

If you want to be lean and mean, go with Slackware. If you want something a bit more user-friendly/desktop-ish, go with Red Hat. However, I must say that installing Slackware 3.0 was never terribly hard for me. It was the first time I installed Linux, and the whole process went rather smoothly. If you know any existing modern distros well enough, Slack 3 should be a cakewalk for you.

Re:What's the point?

[Hillman]

again?