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Free Software Operating Systems for Old Laptops?

Posted by Cliff on from the and-we-mean-OLD-here dept.

X-Nc asks: "I have an old 486 Laptop that does not have a CD drive and , if I remember right, a very small hard disk (a few megs), and maybe 4 megs of RAM. I would like to let my 6 year old son use this for him to play and learn on. What I'd -really- like to do is install Linux or one of the BSD's on it with enough apps to run a simple editor and a few other things. I have other systems that are able to run learning software and games. This would be for him to learn computer fundimentals. I remember in the old days that you could run X11 on this kind of system (my first Linux box was a 386DX-30 with 2meg RAM and a 20 meg HD). I have been digging around in some of the lists of distros to try and find something to load on the system but I can't seem to find one that's right. So, does anyone know of a Free Software (or even commercial) OS that can be installed on such a system that can do more than be just a terminal?"

4 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Well, by ivan256 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You'll be hard pressed to do anything with less than 40-50MB, but if you've got more than that, just install debian. You should be able to install using PPP over the serial port.

    If you're really low on disk space though, 2.5" 1GB IDE drives can be had for around $20. Less if you're willing to snipe on ebay. If you want to spend $35, you can have a whopping 6GB!

  2. DOS? by Glonoinha · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe I am missing the picture here but it sounds like a perfect opportunity for the little guy to spend some time at the command prompt. Even the slowest 486 (a 486sx-25 if I recall correctly, was the slowest 486) is twice as fast as the state of the art machine running when DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 were king. Seven floppys will contain the install disks of both and easily fit on a 20M hard drive, neither requires a CD-ROM either.

    What's a six year old gonna do on DOS/Win3.x? Bah! Same thing he is going to do a 486 running RedHat 5.x - same thing we all did when we were running 486sx machines with 4M RAM, 20M hard drive and no CD : explore, learn, interact, and come up with a wicked cool powerpoint detailing exactly why he needs a faster machine with a current OS.

    Want a cool upgrade? Assuming the drive is a regular 2.5" laptop drive, or even a regular 3.5" drive shoehorned into a laptop, get one of those adapters that lets you replace it with a Compact Flash card. You can get a 128M card for like $50 or a 64M card for less than $30 (+$10 - $20 for the adapter), install everything onto it and all of a sudden the weakest link (hard drives are fragile, yours is old and fragile) is a solid state device impervious to gravity and 6x as large as it was ...

    --
    Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
  3. Re:Why Linux? by Glonoinha · · Score: 4, Informative

    I got to thinking about this after I posted my other post ... but actually I think having his six year old start with Linux instead of Windows is a good idea - esp if he is forced to spend lots of time at the command prompt. He is going to learn first impression thought patterns and given the importance of the Un*x os, a good start. I would recommend teaching him the DOS command shell also, although it probably isn't as pervasive anymore.

    Another question might be ... What apps do you actually want to run on the machine? Figure out which applications the six year old is going to run (CivIII was a good suggestion, but I would also recommend Doom I for a machine with 4 megs of RAM)

    Forget Windows95 on a machine with 4Megs. Yes I know it can be done, but that doesn't mean it is a good idea. Win3.1 should run ok on 4M if he doesn't actually want to run any applications.

    What runs on DOS 6.22/Win3.1 w/ 4M RAM?
    IE 3
    Netscape 3
    Borland's Delphi (Pascal with a GUI IDE)
    Borland's C++ Builder (? can't remember)
    Borland's Dashboard (cool shell for Win3.x)
    Doom I and most of Doom II
    The first three levels of Duke Nukem III
    Falcon 3.0
    FreeAgent connected to Usenet, A.B.E.P.*
    A slew of older games
    Foxpro 2.x for DOS
    GWBasic
    688 Attack Sub
    Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe

    Honestly I don't have a clue of available apps for RH 5.x distro ... any ideas?

    --
    Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
  4. FreeBSD by mcgroarty · · Score: 4, Informative
    It's easy to set up a tiny FreeBSD install. You can build a usable and full-featured kernel for your hardware in around 700k so you're not eating up half the memory with locked pages before you've actually done anything. You may have to step back a few versions to get the smallest kernel.

    While X and all may take a little time to start up, FreeBSD performs exceptionally well under low memory situations. It does very little redundant copying, and tunes the swap and scheduling policies as the load increases to try and help keep interactive applications responding smoothly at the expense of some services.

    Many of these features are now in the Linux kernel, but I don't know that it'll be too easy to pack them into a tiny kernel to maximize the amount of pageable memory for applications.