Looking for a small Linux that will run with a GUI in 4MB of RAM

The link to the article seems to lead back to the front page.

Not having read the article yet, all can do is recommend Damn Small Linux as a start.

Added: OK, clicking on read more gets me to the article. Now to see what I can come up with.

I'd ask for a few more details: Size of Hard Drive? Make and model of system, if known? What external drives and ports are available?

OK, there are a number of floppy based Linux distributions out there, but none that I know of are full featured. You're best bet is probably still DSL, but you have to find a way to get it on the machine. Directions for doing so are apparently here:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Floppy_Only_Ins...

I noticed that Debian .93 is still available, it's got full Xwindow and will run in 4mb of ram.

Ok, so it's Linux kernel version 1.0, but that's life eh? :^)

The only thing I can think of that _might_ work is DeLi Linux 0.7.2. There is an ISO you can download and also a floppy boot disk.

http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/#download

> I noticed that Debian .93 is still available,...

So's Slackware 3.3 for that matter. AFAIK, 3.3 still supported a floppy based install.

Quoting:Size of Hard Drive? Make and model of system, if known? What external drives and ports are available?

The machine is called an "InnovACE the Hyperbook 300 Series"

It has a 250MB hard drive, a Floppy drive and a PCMCIA port.

It has 2 Serial ports, a 9 Pin and a 25 Pin, It has a parallel port and connectors for external Video Monitor and an external keyboard.

> and a PCMCIA port.

Do you have a network card you can use in the PCMCIA port? If so, then you might be able to use a boot floppy to get you on the net, and then you have a number of options avialable. 250 MB is rather limiting, though DSL is designed to take up 50 MB or less.

Quoting:Do you have a network card you can use in the PCMCIA port?

No.

How about: Pull hard disk, hook it up to another comp via usb or ide adapter cable, install on it either direct or via qemu or some such, put it back in laptop?

Of course, this assumes they aren't using a custom made hard disk (most of the ones I see today are standard disks with a custom connector adapter), and that you have a 2.5" to 3.5" or 2.5" to usb adapter cable.

You might want to try some of the stuff listed @ http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/ Good luck.

Traceyanne didn't use a link to another story. I'm guessing it links to the front page since she didn't leave that field blank. People need to either put a "link to an external story" or leave that field blank. We have a story submission how-to that's fairly easy. If I can improve it, please let me know.

alc: Did you see http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Mini_Distributions/

This Mini-Distribution page may be even better for tracyanne's quest.

I myself use LEAF Bering from that page: Whole OS on a floppy. No GUI, though.

There is really an amazing choice of mini distro's there.Tracyanne should be able to find something.

>>InnovACE the Hyperbook 300 Series

Well there's a Google search string!

I found http://www.memoryx.net/hyhyhb30seme.html for "Hyperdata Hyperbook HB 300/486 Series Memory" for starters. Looks like the same system, maybe.

It claims that it maxes at 32 MB mem, which is hard to speculate about without seeing a specs page for the system. Memory for Portables can be very hard to match, but with the right specs can be found used typically at places like eBay for, hopefully, very reasonable prices.

(I remember selling 30-pin SIMMs in the late 90's for $1 for use as home-made hair berets and other artistic uses. "Parts for art.")

The ultimate goal to the google-hunt is to find the actual hardware manual on-line somewhere.

I'll pull it apart an see what sort of RAM the thing has. If I can replace it, I'll look around the recyclers at the Tip and see if they have any more of these of RAM for them.

If I can get 16+ Meg DeliLinux looks pretty good to go.

sander wrote:"could it be used as a thin client to e.g. an LTSP server"

LTSP usually wants to avoid swapping X stuff and 4MB might require that. Swapping really sucks at 10 mbits/s. At 100 mbit/s, it might work. Perhaps the client could swap to the local hard drive. The display on that thing is probably 640x480 or 800x600 which takes far less memory than we use today. LTSP is very general and you may want a smaller kernel for this thing. Most installations of LTSP recommend 32-64MB minimum on the client. You still need to start X on that client and kernel + X is pretty large. If memory could be increased, LTSP would be the best, I am sure. Can you find a 64MB module for it? It might cost more than the machine...

> ...could it be used as a thin client...

I don't think Tracy mentions anywhere whether or not the machine has a network interface. At that age, it's entirely possible that it doesn't.

One extreme course of action would be to obtain the source of the kernel from RH7 and re-build with only the drivers and features needed for the particular machine. That would minimize the space occupied in RAM by the kernel and drivers and might speed up booting and operation in general. You must love the machine to do this much work...

jdixon wrote:"I don't think Tracy mentions anywhere whether or not the machine has a network interface."

True. Machines of that era may not even have had a PCMCIA interface. Dial-up would be an additional complication...

Quoting:don't think Tracy mentions anywhere whether or not the machine has a network interface. At that age, it's entirely possible that it doesn't.

It doesn't.

Quoting:You must love the machine to do this much work...

No, I just thought it would be fun. The bloke that found it in the tip couldn't get it to boot, so I took it home and had a play with it, and got it to boot, it booted into Win95, just the OS no applications. So I thought it might be fun to give him back a working Linux box, if I can.

If there is no network interface (or PCMCIA card?) the best procedure is to remove the hard drive, and put it into another machine to partition and copy the RH7 or other distro in. Then boot from floppy and install from one partition to another on the old machine.

http://tinyurl.com/2dsjkg

You may be able to actually get the installation started from DOS. You put a file called autoboot.bat and loadlin.exe on the drive and invoke it from autoexec.bat at boot time...

That file is at http://tinyurl.com/25qbbb

If you could defrag / repartition that other OS without killing it long enough to start the installation you could save pain. This may not be legal if the licence is invalid... I do not think anyone here will tell. To install from disc, you need the files from the /os directory on a partition and the installer reads the rpms and installs to another partition. You may not have space for two copies and without CD or network, copying by floppies will be time consuming and error-prone.

Need LXer help for this thread.

I can't see most of this thread because it is wider than my screen.

Anyone know a workaround?

The right hand side of the text is overlapped by the right hand panel. I get no L-to-R scroll bar here. I'm at 1400x1050 resolution and using Seamonkey/Iceape ver 1.1.1.

I can usually widen the browser window, or "it wasn't that important." But in this case, the significant technical detail makes it "mission-critical" to my understanding of the conversation and at full width a significant part is still cut off.

Apparently, the root cause is the posting of a long URL in non-clicky format.

Well, if you're using firefox, then ctrl - will shrink your text size to make the text readable. Of course if you're getting up there in years (like me) that causes other problems. :(

Since you're using seamonkey, that will probably work for you too.

On this particular thread, I had to use ctrl - twice to get it to fit on a 1024x768 display.

Works for me...Thanks!

Sorry about that. It works fine in Opera...

Is there a way to insert a clickable link in this forum?

@pogson: LXer automagically clickifies URL's, but apparently not URLs starting with ftp://

I suggest you suggest a bugfix to the editors and use tinyurl in the mean time for the long link.

Back on topic: Perhaps a severely trimmed Linux From Scratch or Gentoo would fit in 4 MB? It would be best to swap the hard drive and build it on another machine though. Avoid long compilation times.

I keep lots of interesting but miscellanious info around. Here is one that may help find a tiny dstro. http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Mini_Distributions/

The laptop has a parallel port, so NFS over PLIP might work. Although, getting it set up in the installation stage will be a challenge.

Slackware used to have "ZipSlack", a pre-packaged ZIP file (or several split-up ZIP files to fit on floppies) containing a working Linux, designed specifically to load and run from a DOS/Windows partition. It also had a file to attempt to pre-install 8M of swap, to assist with low-memory situations.

http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware-8.1/zipslack/

N.B.: Some of the URL's in the docs are from times when Slackware 8.1 was the latest release, and specify simply "/slackware/" instead of "/slackware-8.1/". You will need to adjust the URL's accordingly if you need to go on a file hunt.

I'm getting the same problem with text wrapping. It seems to be wrapping after about 4 words are cut off on the right side of each box. If I maximize the window it just wraps at a different part of the text with other words missing. No such problem on the next thread.

I can see all the text by viewing the source or if I shrink the font down to the smallest size.

I'm using Konqueror 3.5.4 on Slackware 11

Pogson: You can edit your post yourself, and try using the TinyURL thingy Sander mentioned. I've posted a note to Bob about this formatting issue. We may be intentionally rejecting ftp, but I don't know.

BasicLinux looks interesting, This should save me the trouble of trying to find extra RAM.

Shucks! http://Tinyurl.com seems to be off the air... My firewall seems to be blocking it...

I got it for you. It seems to have worked.

I had an "anti-spyware black-hole" in my firewall.

Just about all the Linux versions need rather more than 4 MB. Floppy disk "tomsrtbt" has a good chance to run but that's command line only. That would allow you to test it out. Perhaps you could look at the embedded distros and do a lot of work squeezing them to fit.

But really Windows 95 is likely to be the best thing for such a machine. Since you can buy a much more powerful (250MHz, 64MB!) laptop on eBay for £25 or less, you can't be valuing your time very much if you want to try to get Linux on such an old machine.

ayeomans wrote:"But really Windows 95 is likely to be the best thing for such a machine."

I agree with every thing ayeomans wrote except this snippet. Lose 95 is the reason I switched to Linux. It crashed repeatedly in 72 MB. It would be a nightmare at 4MB. There is not much point in running a slow unreliable system. I am sure a solid installation of Linux while slow would at least be reliable. The original poster mentioned word processing. There is no point typing stuff that will be lost in a BSOD.

Linux will be difficult to install, but we used to do that on machines of that era, so the knowledge is available. The uncertainties are hardware drivers. Laptops were often using proprietary interfaces.

She should give it a try and if it does not install go back to that other OS only as a last resort. A system without a GUI would be quite a suitable goal and would not be difficult if the display can be accessed by Linux.

Someone I know found it in the Tip, and it wasn't booting at all, I managed to get it to recognise the Hard drive and it booted into WIn 95, there are no applications, just the OS.

I just thought it might be fun to install Linux on it, but with some small but usable applications.

>>Simple answer - forget it!

I disagree. The skill required to make an OS work on such a system far outstrips what is called for today.

Having done what tracyanne is attempting, though not with Linux, I know she has a challenge, and that is fun for us.

It also makes us better at our IT jobs than those who who say trash it.

Tracyanne's challenge would be much easier to help fulfill if she did not have the GUI requirement for us to struggle with.

There have been 2 practical solutions I've seen so far: 1) Grab RH 7.0 from RH's alrchives, and 2) DSL.

I say go for it, tracyanne!

Got it! Small Linux

http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?Small_Linux

They tell how to make a network connection using PLIP over a serial cable. They also have a tiny X server so this could connect to a bigger machine to do the work.

PLIP, I thought, was for Parallel, and SLIP and PPP were for Serial, no?

> PLIP, I thought, was for Parallel, and SLIP and PPP were for Serial, no?

Yeah, that's right. I used to use PLIP to install Slackware on an old 486 with no CD-ROM. The last time I did that was probably Slackware 7. You have to have a null-modem parallel cable, but after the install you can continue to use the cable for NFS. (There's also a HOWTO at http://www.tldp.org.)

I think the 4Mb is a bigger problem than the installation, but Small Linux looks interesting.

Sorry to double post, but I also found a "4Mb Laptop HOWTO".

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/4mb-Laptops.html

It builds on pogsons's idea. It uses SmallLinux or MuLinux to create the initial partition, and then installs a subset of Slackware. (He lists a few installation methods, including PLIP or Slackware 7 on 15 floppies.)

Try Deli. It works with old 486s and heas a nice GUI and everything...

I'm actually doing BasicLinux. It will actually run in under 4Meg, Deli requires 16+ and I'd have to find the extra RAM. I'm transfering the files now.

I had to get a zip splitter, and I split the Basic Linux files into 1Meg portions, I'll put them back together on the Laptop extract them and copy them to the appropriate place. I'll let you know haow it goes.

Two questions from curiosity:

From what distribution is BasicLinux derived?

What is a Tip?

Quoting:From what distribution is BasicLinux derived?

What is a Tip?

In reverse order, 1) Do not know which Tip tracyanne is referring to when she writes "Someone I know found it in the Tip" above. 2) From the main BasicLinux page http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/, BL3 derives from Slackware 4.0

Quoting:It is also possible to install packages from Slackware 4.0 (using the pkg command). You will find the packages in the /slakware directory. Note: packages from later Slackwares are not compatible with BL3.

Readers wishing to find out more on BL3 and its Slackware derivative could not only delve into this BL site, but could also more extensively go through the 8yr-old Slackware 4.0 ftp site at mirrors such as ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-4.0 Also note that there are some obvious limitations in BL3 and from the "older" Slackware version upon which it is based.

that's very close to the specs of the firstcomputer I got to run Linux. 486 SX 75MHz, 8MB ram, 40MB HD, floppy.

Windows 3.1 would run well on that. 95 really wanted 6MB or more ram.

Look for an old Linux like slackware with the 1.9 or 2.0 kernel.If you want Gui, the window manager you will want is called FVWM. You will want older versions of that.

I would suggest going command line and using tomsrtbt.

You will probably have to recompile a few things. Being a laptop will make it very non-standard for the kernel in those days.

You might want to check out the Linux Journal archive cd. They have reprints of their issues from the mid 90's. There were lots of how to's in LJ back then. It would be the era of your machine. I wish you luck on your adventure.

Another thought -- with 4 MB of RAM, would some kind of embedded Linux -- with a few extra drivers -- work well on it?

Quoting:From what distribution is BasicLinux derived?

Looks like Slackware, maybe.

Quoting:What is a Tip?

The place where you tip your rubbish. Over here they have a recycling depot as part of the Tip, and things like old computers get sent there to dies slowly.

I ran X11 on an old 386/40MHz with 4MB of RAM in monochrome, and later in 16 color VGA. It can be done quite well. I also did most of my word processing using groff and vi, which worked very very well.

Here's a few key points on running Linux under low memory: Dump GNOME and KDE. Use a light-weight window manager like fvwm2 or twm. Compile your own kernel, but include hard-coded in the drivers you need, and leave all the other filesystems and infrequently used drivers as modules. Do not include any module or driver you do not intend to use. Use something like Slackware, and go through and modify the configuration not to load X11 on start up and to only run the services you need. Yes, 4MB is doable. Just don't expect to run anything like OpenOffice in it.

If you need pretty formatted documents, use the phototypesetter groff/troff -- it produces very nice output, and actually can safe you a lot of time when generating documents (after you learn the syntax). I've become a little lazy in recent years and use openoffice for most of my printed work. However, most of my writing is done in HTML now using the amazing powers of the VI editor.

:ab tbls

Now, whenever you type "tbls", "" will show up on the screen.