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Modern Linux Distribution for (Very) Old Computers

Posted by timothy on from the daddy-what-were-floppy-drives dept.

macemoneta writes "The blueflops floppy-based distribution may be just what many Slashdot users are looking for, to revive old hardware. This is a 2.6.11-7 kernel based tiny distribution, that runs very well on my ancient 486sx25 with just 8MB of RAM. It's text-mode only, at the moment, but it does support hard drive installation, and includes an ssh2 client (dropbear)! Many distributions have moved away from boot floppy support, indicating that the 2.6 kernel is just too big. This distribution proves that where there's a will, there's a way."

5 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. My first post is really a first post ! by aneeshm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is my first post on Slashdot , and it seems to be really a First Post ! Am I the only one to have achieved this ? On the other hand , this is good news , because I have a friend with a 486 , who wants to use it as a toy , but cannot , becuase no modern OS can run on it .

  2. Re:Dumb terminals... by bcmm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Oooohhh...

    I forgot aaxine... Would a LAN have the bandwidth to watch DVDs over SSH with aaxine running on the server side?

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  3. 3rd world? by Julian+Morrison · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Three hundred dollars (or local equivalent) is a lot of money to some people. Like eg: very poor people in the third world. The ability to run modern-but-simple productivity apps (and write their own) on seriously antiquated hardware might well make their day. Sort of "simputer" ad hoc. Not to mention, Linux skills might well be worth serious (local) money.

  4. Text only? by benjamindees · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Where's the Linux distro that turns an old machine into something useful like a kiosk with a webbrowser?

    I've kept as much old hardware as anyone here, but honestly I'm sitting here looking at a P100 and wondering what it's still good for. A buddy of mine just threw away (in the dumpster) a bunch of running 300Mhz machines. I really can't blame him. Putting a "text only" linux distro on them isn't at all useful.

    I can re-purpose old machines as firewalls and routers all day long (no one cares if those are text-only,) but even that's getting to be a waste of time when I can buy a nice tiny new mini-atx box for $200.

    --
    "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
  5. debian woody works on 486dx2(50Mhz) - 16M by mAriuZ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    yah i know is not with kernel 2.6.x
    Apache+php started on it ! -
    It's little slow compared with other old hardware i have (k6-2@500mhz)
    Is way faster than my very old amd 386sx (woody worked on that too !)

    I wonder how to install woody under 4M (another pc)
    maybe with Linux-tiny will work

    http://www.selenic.com/tiny-about/

    --
    developer http://flamerobin.org