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Author Topic: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?  (Read 1462 times)

simontag

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Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« on: 13 July 2005, 03:26 »
(2) Problems

(1)
I have 5 Hitachi M-120D laptops. 133mhz - 32mb - 1gb - 12in dual scan screen - non-hot swap floppy/cdrom - I could not hope that someone on this forum would have that laptop and installed linux but, what flavor and version of linux do you think would work well on these specs.

(2)
I have tried to boot off of Debain and Slack CD's with failure on both. It will however boot off of many CD's that I do have (no Linux)so it is not a physical issue. Also the machine does (BIOS) support it and is not simply a fluke. I don't know why Debian won't boot. :mad:

I have been surfing many pages and this one: http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/
It has many many distros but I have yet to decide what would work well, I also don't want to DL and install something that would be too far from mainstream versions (I am installing it to learn Linux better) And have decided that my main version of Linux used on my home machines will be Debian.

Thanks
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bedouin

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #1 on: 13 July 2005, 03:29 »
Tried BSD instead of Linux?
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simontag

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #2 on: 13 July 2005, 03:35 »
I have not. I am trying to learn Linux well enough to move my 18 computers all to it. Not to mention the fact that over 1/2 of them are crappy enough to only run Windows 95/98.

I don't know how different BSD is and did not want to jump into it if I will need to learn 2 different OS's. Don't know if the commands are different. I know many of the core commands are not becuase I work on Mac's. But, I just don't know the pitfalls of running it and trying to learn Linux at the same time.

The laptop will go everywhere with me and I will use it as my mobile training tool.


ST
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mobrien_12

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #3 on: 13 July 2005, 03:45 »
Do they not boot at all or just freeze up?

If it's the latter, perhaps these laptops do not have DMA support.  Can you try supplying the nodma option to the installer?  I had to do that to get Knoppix working on an laptop CDROM drive.
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WMD

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #4 on: 13 July 2005, 03:45 »
Quote
I have 5 Hitachi M-120D laptops. 133mhz - 32mb - 1gb - 12in dual scan screen - non-hot swap floppy/cdrom

Windows 95.  No, really.


Check the CDs that you have that will boot.  Are they less than 650MB?  Some old drives may only support 74 minute CDs.  If this is the case, Debian might actually boot...oh yeah.  Slackware wouldn't though - you could try finding an ISO of Slackware 8.1. which is smaller.
On to the other possibility - you aren't burning the CDs properly.  The original bootable CDs were 2.88MB boot images, not your typical ISO.  Not sure how you could fix all that - and you can't swap the floppy/cd-rom...

I'm stuck.
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simontag

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #5 on: 13 July 2005, 04:02 »
Quote from: mobrien_12
Do they not boot at all or just freeze up?

If it's the latter, perhaps these laptops do not have DMA support. Can you try supplying the nodma option to the installer? I had to do that to get Knoppix working on an laptop CDROM drive.


Tried 2 others - they recognize the hardware load the CDrom drives then locks. BIOS has no options for DMA support. Very limited BIOS options

Quote from: WMD
Windows 95.  No, really.
 
 
 Check the CDs that you have that will boot. Are they less than 650MB? Some old drives may only support 74 minute CDs. If this is the case, Debian might actually boot...oh yeah. Slackware wouldn't though - you could try finding an ISO of Slackware 8.1. which is smaller.
 On to the other possibility - you aren't burning the CDs properly. The original bootable CDs were 2.88MB boot images, not your typical ISO. Not sure how you could fix all that - and you can't swap the floppy/cd-rom...
 
 I'm stuck.

Yeah Windows 95 - installed it on some of them when I was studying for my A+ some time ago.

The debian and slack ones are both - link for the debian iso I downloaded: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r0a/i386/iso-cd/debian-31r0a-i386-netinst.iso

I hooked up a network card via the parallel port old xircom model - but that should not matter until after the install starts when it is checking the packages and then goes online to grab the additional during the "install the base system" portion of the setup.

As for burning I am dl an ISO and I have used Alcohol 120 and nero to burn to disc. Tried different CDROM too.

Arggghhhhh
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bedouin

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #6 on: 13 July 2005, 04:05 »
Quote from: simontag
Don't know if the commands are different. I know many of the core commands are not becuase I work on Mac's.


What do you mean 'core' commands?  Bash is bash, csh is csh, etc etc.

Major differences are under the hood, package management, and some small things like start up scripts.  

If you learn how to use one *nix in and out you'll be at home pretty much anywhere.  Not to mention, each Linux distro has its own way of doing things.

And OS X is not the same as BSD, even though it borrows a lot.
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WMD

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #7 on: 13 July 2005, 04:09 »
Well, I can always support this, my favorite old floppy Linux:
http://mulinux.sunsite.dk/

It's dated (kernel 2.0.36, libc5, etc.) but it still works like Linux, is easy to put on, works on 8MB RAM, the CD version comes with XFce 3.6.1 (decent desktop considering the age), and all the scripts are written in humorous fractured English - easy to understand, but nonetheless broken.  I always enjoyed it.

If you can only get the floppy version running, it may be possible to add packages from the CD (like XFce) later on.
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simontag

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #8 on: 13 July 2005, 04:13 »
Quote from: bedouin
What do you mean 'core' commands?  Bash is bash, csh is csh, etc etc.
 
 Major differences are under the hood, package management, and some small things like start up scripts.  
 
 If you learn how to use one *nix in and out you'll be at home pretty much anywhere. Not to mention, each Linux distro has its own way of doing things.
 
 And OS X is not the same as BSD, even though it borrows a lot.

Core meaning just that. The commands that make up the primary part of the system that would not change from distro to distro. My point was that I don't know enough about it to make that decision. Package Mgmt. might be only one of the differences. Where certain directories are might be different. Compilers for programming. Utilities for checking logs and what not - I would have no idea if they were the same as most Linux distributions. I just know that I have ran a bit of Red Hat and Debian & Slack and it seems that I have to use diffrent commands sometimes and for a new user trying to learn. It would be better to stay with 1 flavor across the board and learn it vs. multiple. Again I don't know and if I don't know how to drive a car I still might jump in but if it is a stick I might pass it up. Point is I don't know the differences!

And my OS X comment refers to something like this that I have read:

Mac OS X uses FreeBSD as a reference code base for its BSD derivations (Panther derives from FreeBSD 5.0). It includes a BSD-based POSIX API (BSD style system call vector, uap based argument passing, etc.)

ST
« Last Edit: 13 July 2005, 04:14 by simontag »
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KernelPanic

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #9 on: 13 July 2005, 13:03 »
You need to look at something small or old.
I'd suggest Damn Small Linux, it sounds like what you're looking for. The skills you learn will be transferable across Debian based distributions (KNOPPIX, Ubuntu, Xandros etc.) at the very least.
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piratePenguin

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #10 on: 14 July 2005, 04:27 »
Look at: Linux From Scratch. Very educational, and the book is straight forward. And it would run on practically anything and everything. A bit hard to maintain after you've finished following the instructions in the book, compiling every single package from scratch (most common ones have instructions in the Beyond Linux From Scratch book though), but for laptops like that you may not want many packages.
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simontag

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Re: Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?
« Reply #11 on: 14 July 2005, 08:23 »
Quote from: piratePenguin
Look at: Linux From Scratch. Very educational, and the book is straight forward. And it would run on practically anything and everything. A bit hard to maintain after you've finished following the instructions in the book, compiling every single package from scratch (most common ones have instructions in the Beyond Linux From Scratch book though), but for laptops like that you may not want many packages.

Got a couple that I am trying out right now with multiple issues. Mostly (stupidity) probably. I went to the site and will check it out. Looks very promising. I am currently trying MULinux. Floppy distribution. However, when using the boot disc to create the installer disc with the addon discs. It does not give me any options for the addon's to be created. Then when I run the actual installation it does not load any of the modules. I can not get the information on to the HD before and has to be laoded via floppy. ARGGGGHH

Thanks though - im just getting frustrated -
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