Even DSL is a crawl on a 486. I've tried 😒

An old Linux would run better, obviously at the expense of compatibility with newer software and libs.

I have a copy of Slackware 2.1 lying around somewhere...

When I was a sysadmin for my College some 12 years ago we had a 486 (can't remember any details, though) routing and firewalling three or four computer labs - it was happily running RedHat 4.x. It was called Balder (all servers had names taken from the Norse mythology - students' server was Fenrir, professors' server was Thor, another lab server was Freya, and so on)...

Probably a uclibc based Gentoo, but that's an awful lot of work.

Well, Slackware is out of the game since the install images seeded are mostly for DVDs, but a ain't any DVD drives currently, only an external one, but not now...

DSL gives me the following error : " fatal IO error 104 (connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed with 0 events remaining. " A lot of people point to the refresh rates and proper resolution setup by editing a certain config file, but that one is present on the CD, so I can't edit it, only editing the file could make some difference, but I even tried lowest of the low settings available...still the error...will try the textmode installation tomorrow, maybe today at midnight.

Puppy Linux gives me error at CHS sector 0...I guess this may have something to do with the boot sector or the Disk Modes (LBA, Normal, CHS) - all in all, different usage of HDD addressing I suppose, right? Gotta google more...

I've discovered a DeLi Linux, not really sure what to expect from it or so, but it seems to be recommended for older / vintage PCs, such as the 486 class. This actually seems to work flawlessly, installation goes through a DOS-looking interface, this time even the HDD is used 😁, but nonetheless, even this one failed, but I guess I'll get it done - PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT = this is what I get after the install. The thing is that I formatted the drive in Partition Wizard Home Edition from the Hiren's boot CD 12.0 as an EXT2, by recommendation of my experienced friend, but I guess I should have left the drive raw and let the installation procedure to get it done - will retry.

FYI - I'm booting from a boot floppy to access the content of the installation CDs.

The Slackware I have comes on floppies... 😀

Interesting...maybe this deserves to be uploaded to the VOGONS FTP?

I did not make my self clear though, what I want is to have some basic GUI and a lots of space and environment in the shell mode - really gotta learn as a lot of job opportunities are closely related to the UNIX / LINUX problematics - and I am amazed by the instant USB support, thus really wish to begin wandering through the world of Nix 😀

Shodan486 wrote:

Basically I wanna start using and learning the smallest and simplest distros, step by step, on my 486.

Shodan486 wrote:

I did not make my self clear though, what I want is to have some basic GUI and a lots of space and environment in the shell mode - really gotta learn as a lot of job opportunities are closely related to the UNIX / LINUX problematics

This is baffling. Any variety of Linux that you are going to manage to get running on a 486 is likely to be completely different from whatever you would actually end up using on the job these days. Certainly, the hardware is going to be completely different. And furthermore, especially if you're determined to start with "smallest and simplest", forget about having a GUI.

You would probably be much better off with one of those Raspberry Pis that are currently so popular. Or you can just do everything through Bochs.

Anyway, Vector Linux is kind of popular for primitive hardware, or at least it used to be.

Way back in the day, a company named Infomagic used to release rather large packages of CDs that they called the "Linux Developer's Resource". You might consider trying to track down one of those. A Google search for <infomagic linux> turns up http://lwn.net/Articles/91371/ .

Interesting! Thanks for pointing out for more and more distros, I really can't figure out which of them is the best for beginners....

In regards to my ''baffling", you're definitely right, those distros suggested by me are absolutely different and use different commands or whatever guy use at my job currently, but the point is to get accustomed, the same way we all accustomed to windows and its ways of operation. The best example is to get used to something like root/dev/scd01 instead of C:\ ... you get the picture. Thus I just wanted to fool around with the GUI to get attached, then DEFINITELY follow up to the shell.

A little sidegoal though - just want to see how the 486 i'm using is able to handle various multimedia stuff in linux environment, playing mp3 plus browsing net etc...

Shodan486 wrote:

those distros suggested by me are absolutely different and use different commands or whatever guy use at my job currently

Why don't you just ask these "guy at you your job currently" what they recommend to prepare you for current job opportunities, rather than delving in ancient history? (Yes, sometimes there are things to be learned from ancient history. This is not one of those times.)

but the point is to get accustomed, the same way we all accustomed to windows and its ways of operation. The best example is to get used to something like root/dev/scd01 instead of C:\ ... you get the picture.

You wouldn't poke around with Windows 3.1 to get accustomed to Windows 7, would you?

- Bummer, I meant ''guys'', alright, sorted.

- Alright, I get it - so it's better to begin with something up to date, so what's your opinion on that? Regardless of the HW used.

You claim "a lot of job opportunities are closely related to the UNIX / LINUX problematics". While that may be true (I have no idea), different fields will surely use it for different things, so you should talk to the people who work in whatever field you are seeing these job opportunities.

If I had to take a wild stab, I think Red Hat Enterprise Linux is still fairly popular in enterprises (as per the name); it has a whole bunch of free derivatives, including the bleeding-edge Fedora. (Tip: Do not use Logical Volume Management when installing it; it is not particularly compatible with anything else.)

Maybe no longer relevant to the OP, but I used to run debian [woody I think] on a 486 thinkpad, command-line only. I now run debian on a phenom x4 box. Provided you steer clear of unsupported hardware [or at least don't choose a nic that doesn't have open source drivers if attempting a net install... been there done that 🤣] debian seems good and it underpins a number of other distros. Excellent package mangement, variety of install methods - cd iso's downloadable [including very small versions] and at least in the past you could do it by floppy image [my 486 had no cd or dvd drive - I used floppies and network install via dialup].

If you don't know linux then invest in a decent book - maybe something like Multitool Linux.

Slackware. Not GUI. CLI only. Not a recent version, but not the oldest. You need GOOD 486 package support.

This is probably the best option. Vintage software for vintage hardware. Even command line stuff has been bloated to where it may consume many megs. I hope you like configuring kernels.

I do see this question from time to time. I wonder if there would be interest in a retro-modern Linux distro. It would take a lot of work to find the size/functionality sweetspot for so much software though.

I used to run RedHat Linux 6.0 on my old 5x86 133Mhz rig with a PC Chips M919 board and 16MB RAM. No problems on the command line or in X Windows although it would have been a lot happier with 32MB running fvwm95 as a window manager.

I tried some skinny distro's with and without X - I find it's just too slow with more modern apps. You can build your own distro.

Slackware would be best option for speed, DSL would be for everything readyd to go OOBE.

SquallStrife wrote:

The Slackware I have comes on floppies... 😀

THis sounds cool

I tried about a dozen different distros on a fast 486 a few years ago. It was a Cyrix 5x86-120, 256 MB RAM, Matrox G200. I tried several old versions as well. I did A LOT of online reading and read much of the accompining manuals from FreeBSD, Debian, etc. There seems to be no way around editing the config file for the graphics if you are going to use an X-Windows systems on an older distro, at least for my setup there wasn't. I played around with GNOME, KDE, and a few light X-Window managers (forget their official names now). Firefox on a 486 is very slow compared to IE on Windows. Opera 8.x is probably the latest browser you want to run. Of everything I tried, I found that the graphics on linux was just too slow compared to MS Windows 98, NT4, and even W2K. The distro that worked with the least amount of configuration was DSL. It also seemed the quickest to run X. I used a bootable USB drive for that, which required at least 128 MB of RAM.

Based on some of the burned DVD/CD's I still have in my drawer, I tried these:

Debian 4.0 r6 and newer
Simply MEPIS 3.4-3
Slax Linux 6.0.9
Desktop Light Linux (DeLi Linux) 0.7.2
PC-BSD 7.0.2
Damn Small Linux (DSL) 4.4.10
FreeBSD 4.11, 5.5, 6.4, 7.1
Solaris 8
SuSe 9.x
Puppy Linux 2.16.1
ZenWalk 5.2
DragonFly BSD 2.2.0

I had tried out many more discs but tossed 'em. RedHat 5 was one I recall.

I'd like to get one of those Rasberry Pi's if they would finalise the GPIO daughter board onto the main PCB.