Hi there,

check out www.distrowatch.com - it sounds like you need a compressed
version of linux.

Check these flavours: Damn Small Linux & Puppy Linux. These are the 2 I
can remember off the top 'o my head. Don't count on using Gnome or KDE
but there are other decent window managers to choose from. Personally I
like DSL as the OS and window manager run fine on my 300Mhz laptop with
96Mb RAM. There are many others out there and most will probably be too
heavy for your P1 - but check them out and go for it. If they have
live-CDs, then try them as well!

I don't think you can boot your laptop with USB (hell, your lappie
doesn't even have a USB does it?) - but then just download the files
and pop them on a CD and install according to the guides for the
distro. Ubuntu has an 'old-pc' version - give it a try but dont expect
too much as I still think your lappie is a bit too old for it.

Good luck and await a torrent of replies to your posting!

temba

David wrote:
> Is there a current Linux will work on an Pentium 1 processor? Eg. a very
> old laptop that orig. ran Win 95.
>
I do not know about current, but I ran Red Hat Linux 9 on an old PC with 256
MBytes RAM and a 166 MHz Pentium processor. It worked, but it was too slow
and drove me nuts. With 256 MBytes RAM, it was not paging much at all;
anything 128 MBytes or more would have been as fast.

Now, RH9 is by no means current (discontinued at least 2 years ago), and
more up-to-date distributions are probably even more CPU hungry. So it will
depend on just how much RAM you have in there (less than 128 MBytes will
definitely result in too much paging) and how slow it can go and still be
considered as "working" by you.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 07:55:01 up 30 days, 10:24, 3 users, load average: 4.19, 4.16, 4.16

David wrote:
> Is there a current Linux will work on an Pentium 1 processor? Eg. a
> very old laptop that orig. ran Win 95.
>
> Thanks
>
>

I run Slackware 11.0 on an old Pentium 133 with only 32MB ram with a
2.4.32 kernel. But forget any graphic application on such box :-(

Ciao
Giovanni
--
A computer is like an air conditioner,
it stops working when you open Windows.
Registered Linux user #337974 < http://giovanni.homelinux.net/ >

"David" wrote in message
news:2ei2m2h0mmqjsahqjng2njqbip2gda7fvc@4ax.com...
> Is there a current Linux will work on an Pentium 1 processor? Eg. a
> very old laptop that orig. ran Win 95.

All i386 based kernels will work assuming driver compatibilities.
It's the amount of ram and the tasks you want the computer to
perform and the speed requirement that will be the determining
factors whether or not you will be happy with it.

If you could provide a detailed list of the hardware envolved,
that would enable us to give better feedback.

later.....

http://www.volny.cz/basiclinux/oldpc/


"David" wrote in message
news:2ei2m2h0mmqjsahqjng2njqbip2gda7fvc@4ax.com...
> Is there a current Linux will work on an Pentium 1 processor? Eg. a
> very old laptop that orig. ran Win 95.
>
> Thanks
>
>

In article news:<2ei2m2h0mmqjsahqjng2njqbip2gda7fvc@4ax.com>, David wrote:
> Is there a current Linux will work on an Pentium 1 processor? Eg. a
> very old laptop that orig. ran Win 95.

I've run a fairly current Debian ("Sarge" I think, I don't have the machine
here to check) on a Pentium I with MMX instructions. I think it should run
on any '586. That hardware is a bit inadequate for other reasons (2GB HDD,
64MB RAM) but Debian does run with KDE ... albeit slowly.

I had to create a swap partition before it would even install, though.

Cheers,
Daniel.