Free Software Operating Systems for Old Laptops?

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?"

Comments

Well,

[ivan256]

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!

Lessee...

[Otter]

I'm not entirely sure I understand -- your concern is that you can't find a current distribution that will readily run on this hardware, right?

How about using an old Linux distro, something from the Red Hat 5.x era? There are a ton of security holes, but given the environment in which this is going to be used (a single 6 year old user, no important data, no networking) who cares if wu-ftpd is vulnerable?

Run WindowMaker or AfterStep or even that fvwm95 monstrosity Red Hat used to ship and it will be fine.

I've never seen it, but QNX might be an alternative. Does BeOS support pre-Pentium systems?

Windows 95

[perljon]

Step1) Format and load Windows 95.
Step2) Throw some Sid Meiers Colonization on that bad boy
Step3) ... Step4) Let him play on it for 3 months. Step5) Got to step 1.

DOS?

[Glonoinha]

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 ...

Re:Why Linux?

[Glonoinha]

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?

Instead

[Strange Ranger]

Do not stick him at a command prompt. Let him discover that like the secret underground passage that it is.

From lots of personal experience, I suggest instead of asking 'What OS', ask "How can I introduce computers to my 6 year old in a fun way?" And go from there. In other words your solution should be application specific, not OS specific. Games are good. Making his name flash on the screen is good. If you really want him to learn fast lock him out of folders named "Christmas List", "Secrets", etc.

Reading, computing, microscopes, and ant farms. These things all need to FUN for kids otherwise it's work and kids learn to hate it quickly.

FreeBSD

[mcgroarty]

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.

Use it as an X Terminal

[darnok]

I know your original message said something about using an OS "other than a terminal", but you might consider bringing it up as an XTerm. From the wording of your question, I'm guessing that you've got a more modern Linux box somewhere that you yourself use, so why not install your kid's apps on that and let him run riot accessing it via an XTerm?

Advantages:
- given that you'll probably be installing Linux and X on the old laptop anyway, it should be easier to install just enough to have it run as an Xterm, rather than having to install several games, drawing programs, etc. into limited space
- you'll probably get more life out of it, given that there's very little that's going to have to change on it once it's up and going properly
- you can send him cute messages from your other PC (don't underestimate how exciting kids find this!)
- very little software on his PC means very little to go wrong
- if/when he breaks or outgrows it, you can quickly get another clunker PC and bring it up as another XTerm

Disadvantages:
- you'll need a network card, which you may or may not have in this laptop. It should be pretty cheap to track down an old Xircom or something similar

FWIW, my two boys (6 and 4) have been playing games and surfing Web sites on one of my Linux PCs for years - basically, they started "helping" me work before they could walk. There's lots of games and drawing programs out there if you look around. They're yet to show OTT geek tendencies, or any inability to use a MS OS, as far as I can detect - you should be safe!