Very Computer

Hi,

 I wanted to make use of an old 486 I have. I just want to use it as a web
browser.

Is Linux a reasonable thing to use for this app?
If so, where would I find a old version of Linux for a 486 computer (with
installation instructions)?

thanks,
Al

Depends on how technical you are(or how much time and effort
you are willing to invest.)  The leaner dist. that you configure
with scripts the old fashioned way require less hardware but
more savvy to install and maintain.  One of the best setups
on my 50 MHZ 486 w/16 MB ram was Slackware 3.0 running
one of the early 2.x kernels.  I used fvwm as window manager
and could run X on it quite reasonably.  It was fine for surfing
the net with a 56K dial-up connection.  I don't know about
broadband. The CPU probably wouldn't handle it.

Anyway, this site has a lot of ISO images of various Linux
flavors tuned to different needs.  Some have a small footprint
that may work well for you:

www.linuxiso.org

--

"I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."

    -- Groucho Marx

 >  One of the best setups

Quote:> on my 50 MHZ 486 w/16 MB ram was Slackware 3.0 running
> one of the early 2.x kernels.  

I have Slack 7.1 on a 50MHz 486 w 20MB ram with 2.4 kernel that
does a nice job considering the age of the system but I would
stay away from GNOME and KDE if you want to get anything done.

--
   Confucius:  He who play in root, eventually kill tree.
Registered with the Linux Counter.  http://counter.li.org

I've got an old 486/66 64Mb up and running under Slack 8.1 just fine.
Kernel version is 2.4.19.
X is a bit of a problem though, because X 4.1.0 isn't supporting
my S3 805 card. I'll have to install the 3.3.6 X server someday.
As Michael says fvwm is good choice. I ran that for years on end
on that particular box.
You'll probably have to install it with a pair of floppies, cause those
old systems won't boot from CD, and access the installation media via NFS.
This way won't need CDROM player. Slack handles this easily provided you'be got
a recognised network adapter (3c509 or so).
And, to my surprise, Linux can even handle large (well, relative to those systems)
disks, say tens of Gigs, albeit in pio0 mode.

Or in a nutshell: you can do it.

Kirth

I'd say Slackware or Debian shoild run on your computer.

But, as mentioned in this thread, you're probably going to be limited in
what you may be able to do.

A i486 may make a good firewall/router box for sharing a Cable/DSL
connection.

Dave

: I wanted to make use of an old 486 I have.
: I just want to use it as a web browser.
: Is Linux a reasonable thing to use for this app?

Yes, but web browsing with a modern browser may eat up more memory than
you'd like.  X and a browser will run in 16mb, but may thrash virtual
memory a bit.  Get 32mb or more of old memory parts for the '486 if you
can.  Again, not so much for X, as for the web browser, which can suck
down 10 or 20 megabytes just loading a page or two.  FWIW, the old
netscape 4.7x releases consume about half that of a new mozilla release
for loading the same page, just eyeballing it by use of "top".

: where would I find a old version of Linux for a 486 computer
: (with installation instructions)?

Hmmmm.  Last time I ran a full linux on a 16mb 486, it was
redhat 5.6, and before that, early slackware.  I have no idea
if those releases still exist.  Luckily, you don't necessarily
need an old release; slackware can be installed very lean indeed,
but instructions for doing so are maybe a problem.

There are a wide variety of linux releases listed at

    http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/

some of which purport to have easy install instructions
and a small footprint (though they normally seem to mean
disk footprint, not memory footprint, but still).  Some
that look promising are

    http://www.scrudgeware.org/
    http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut/
    ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/vectorlinux/

in addition to the old standard

    ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/slackware/

You have to beware, since some of these may be "optimized" by
compiling them for pentium-and-later-only CPUs, and so forth.
But you should be OK with slackware, and as I recall, peanut
linux has a '386 and newer iso image as well as a '586 and newer one.

All in all, if it were me, I'd probably try scrudgeware, since
it seems to have the right goals in mind and may have done most of
the work of working on small systems, and fall back to slackware
if all other promising leads fail.  Or, just cut to the chase
and start with slackware :-).  Depends on how much fussing around
you want to do, and how comfortable you are figuring out which
packages you need and which you can leave out.

Note in passing, a lot of those distributiosn have the goal of fitting
on a floppy, or to be the base of embedded development, or for use of an
old box as a router, or other really REALLY small environments.  But
of course, the really small ones don't normally have X, sigh.

An idea may be to check a bargain bin or public library for
a book/CD combo.  The book "Linux Configuration and
Installation 2nd ed." has Slackware96 so I'm thinking
the 3rd ed. must be where I got Slackware 3.0.

A search of Amazon and other book sites may generate
a list of titles for bargain search(or if money ain't a problem
just order it while there.)

The book I refered to has some pretty good sections on
basic use of editors and shell scripts to help get a newbie
started, and also a pretty good section on getting X to
run.

--

"I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."

    -- Groucho Marx

RH 6.2 will run ok, 350meg workstation install(you can peel this back.). It
really needs 32 megs of ram , xfce is good window manager to use with it.
And Opera 5 static runs just peachy, just don't expect steller performance.
i've had it dual booting with OS/2 ver3.