Help with old computer

[Dashh]

I've spent a lot of disks trying to find a linux that will work on my old Compaq 520 (100 mgHz,20Mg memory and 1.7gb drive).I would like something that will be better than Win95...it won't take Win9 What i"ve found is the boot blocks are some old format and I can't get linuxes to install. Most live disks won't load either, although I did manage one, but then I can't install it on the disk. I'm no good at dos, but maybe that is what I need to reformat the drive to accept something? I don't want to end up with nothing working on the computer at all, and also don't want a linux that is slower than Win95.

I have surfed around and there are lots of suggestions of small linuxes but they are just ideas, I would like to find a distro that has actually been tested on such a old computer, and is optimal,rather than "just working"(as well as how to make the drive accept it)

The computer is to be used for mostly email, and light googleing.

Thanks for any authoritative help!

Dashh

[GNU-Fan]

You will need to gather some knowledge about how partitioning works in order to make your drive ready for install.

One convenient LiveCD especially for setup up hard-drives is News
If this doesn't run on your old system, you have to fall back to the text only fdisk.

In the next step, you could install a light distribution like:
DSL information
Puppy Linux
BasicLinux


Alternatively, you could check whether there are "Installfests" being held somewhere near you. You can bring your computer and they will help you for free or a beer.
Linux User Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[bkovacevich]

IMHO, any Linux distribution will be better than Win9x, although the more recent versions of some may not be faster. I'm currently using Fedora Core 5 on an old Packard Bell (333MHz Celeron processor, ~16G HD, 384MB ram and it seems to be fine - have tried running FC9/10 on it and they will run, but slowly.

[kewlharsh]

I agree, linux will work better than windows. I would suggest trying puppy linux or damn small linux. I have been running puppy linux from a usb disk for about 6 months now, and there has not been any problem. You should be able to go about with your everyday computing with any of these distros!

[Dashh]

Thanks everone,especially GNU-Fan. now I will try these suggestions