Installing Basic linux on an ancient dinosaur

[Pasha]

Hello, I have inherited an ancient Compaq LTE Elite 75/4 CX and have been trying to install basiclinux on it. The only things I want to do on it are to program in c and in nasm (to write an operating system) and to use some sort of advanced wordprocessor that has spell checking and autoformatting. This laptop has 32mb of ram and currently has an 800 or so mb harddrive. I can get basiclinux on to it via floppies, but geting anything else on it is extremely difficult. I also have a laptop with a usb port. It has a cd drive but it doesn't work. My plan was to put my harddrive in the newer laptop and boot basic linux via floppies. then to load the usb drivers for a usbstick and load the additional software I would need. I have found a small version of gcc and nasm, but I have not so far been able to get either the usb to work or Abiword to run. any help would be welcome.

PS. if you know of any better or lighter text editor that would also help

[GNU-Fan]

I don't think you will be happy with Abiword, as it depends on X and this is very demanding on resources.
How about Emacs?

[Bemk]

Small text editor... Is VI or Nano also a valid option? It's command line, but to me that doesn't matter. I'm a huge fan of BASH, If I could I'd put it on every computer at school.

[Pasha]

I already am using Xvesa on this laptop. It uses JWM or ICEWM so I am not using too many resources. I need to be able to write a research paper on it, so I would like to use something more sophisticated, but I will definitely check into nano and Emacs. THanks a lot.

A nother question. what scsi modules do I need to run the usb-storage.o module.

[terraman]

Hello, I have inherited an ancient Compaq LTE Elite 75/4 CX and have been trying to install basiclinux on it. The only things I want to do on it are to program in c and in nasm (to write an operating system) and to use some sort of advanced wordprocessor that has spell checking and autoformatting. This laptop has 32mb of ram and currently has an 800 or so mb harddrive. I can get basiclinux on to it via floppies, but geting anything else on it is extremely difficult. I also have a laptop with a usb port. It has a cd drive but it doesn't work. My plan was to put my harddrive in the newer laptop and boot basic linux via floppies. then to load the usb drivers for a usbstick and load the additional software I would need. I have found a small version of gcc and nasm, but I have not so far been able to get either the usb to work or Abiword to run. any help would be welcome.

PS. if you know of any better or lighter text editor that would also help

Pasha,

I have successfully installed Ubuntu 8.04 in my laptop (see signature). You can visit https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...wMemorySystems. It will guide you to install it. However, it will take a lot of time, in my laptop it took 24 hs. You have to be extremely patient. Debian has a similar guide, which I have not tried it so far.

As far as I know, former Ubuntu releases have less memory requirements.

Good luck!

[Pasha]

Thanks. I would like to stay with basic linux to keep it small. I have a small harddrive, and little ram. I also only have a 75 megahertz processor. so Basic linux seems good for me. the problem right now is that I cannot get basic linux onto my harddrive becasue the laptop I am using for the install doesn't have a working CD rom. and while it does have USB, I am still unable to get that working. that is the problem right now. I think I might just end up borrowing another laptop with a working CD drive and an ide hardrive slot.

Thanks. I will keep you posted.
Pasha

[terraman]

Thanks. I would like to stay with basic linux to keep it small. I have a small harddrive, and little ram. I also only have a 75 megahertz processor. so Basic linux seems good for me. the problem right now is that I cannot get basic linux onto my harddrive becasue the laptop I am using for the install doesn't have a working CD rom. and while it does have USB, I am still unable to get that working. that is the problem right now. I think I might just end up borrowing another laptop with a working CD drive and an ide hardrive slot.

Thanks. I will keep you posted.
Pasha

Pasha,

Search the net and in Ubuntu/Debian/Linux forums. I have seen your problem many times. You can try the next page:Linux Links - The Linux Portal: Distributions/Mini_Distributions, there are some Distro that can be installed from floppy disks.

[Pasha]

Thanks for all the help. I was able to get It working using a harddrive image i found on the internet that had abiword preinstalled. I have done a lot of configuring to get it to work, but for the most part it works fine. I have to use Xf86 though, and that makes it slower. I have two questions.

In Xf86 I end up with a virtual screen that is larger than my actual screen and consequently I am unable to see all of my abiword window. how do I set my virtual screen to be the same size as my actual screen.


Secondly when I run Abiword, I have to use XF86 does anyone know how or what to do to get abiword to work on Xvesa. Xvesa does not have the problem i mentioned with virtual screen size.