[wplug] iso small distro

[Rick Smith]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 07:30:05AM -0800, Elwin Green wrote:
> I have inherited a dinosaur, and want to make it a pet.

Slackware

> The machine is a 386/33 with 4MB RAM, 2 SCSI drives (200 MB each). and a 3.5
> floppy drive (NO CD-ROM). It has Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on it, and I'd
> like to make it a pure Linux box, for learning purposes. 

Slackware

> I've been looking for a small distro, but most of the ones I've found
> require 8MB RAM, because they use ramdisks. Others either don't support
> SCSI, or require a CD-ROM. I did find one - Martin's Mandrake 6 - which I
> got up and running, but I couldn't find a text editor there (if anyone has
> used it, did I overlook something?).

Slackware

> Can anyone recommend a distro that I can download to floppy and install to
> hard drive, that supports SCSI, and that will work and play with 4MB RAM? (X
> Windows neither necessary nor desired)

Slackware

ftp ftp.slackware.org
cd pub/mirrors/slackware/slackware-3.3 (or 3.4 or newer.  I listed
oldest there)

root around.  Old distributions such as slackare were cut up to
have chunks which could fit on floppies.  Look at (in the above
area) slakware/x2 for example:

-r--rw-r--   1 volkerdi slackware      665 Sep 25  1997 diskx2
-r--rw-r--   1 volkerdi slackware   724848 Sep 25  1997 x3318514.tgz
-r--rw-r--   1 volkerdi slackware   333935 Jun 10  1997 x331cfg.tgz
-r--rw-r--   1 volkerdi slackware   265200 Sep 25  1997 x331doc.tgz

Funny permissions, but it means the whole directory can fit on a floppy.
It's organized to get a system going with a subset of floppies.  Like
since you don't need X isn't a big deal, you wouldn't take the x* stuff.

Is this the type of pointer you were looking for?  Or something
else/more?

-- Rick