Help for a 8MB Ram PC.

[Manny86]

Hi friends,
I am new to the world of Linux and I would like to ask If anyone could help me. I wish to install and operating system on my PC. This is an old PC that i wish to install the OS onto. It's specs are (8MB Ram, 733mhz, 700MB Hardsik space and runs on the 386 processor) It used to have Windows 3.1 on it then currently it has Windows 98 which runs very slowly. Could someone kindly advise me as to which Linux OS is best for this system. I heard DamnSmallLinux runs on it but when I read the PC requirements for it on its website it said it needed a minimum of 24MB. Please do kindly help, this is just a hobby of mine to make old PC's work. Have a great week friends.

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

You can find some mini linux distributions that might run on it, here:

Mini Linux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...a few other potential options can be found here:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/cof...re-2009-a.html

Do let us know if you find one that works out well.

[Manny86]

Thank you for such a quick reply. I truly appreciate it. May I ask another question? I am very new to Linux and I do not know any commands thus I need an OS with some kind of GUI to navigate by. Could you recommend any please? Thank you for your time.

[oz]

You can add a GUI interface to any distribution that has the RAM and CPU power needed to handle it. Most GUI interfaces might have a bit of a rough time running on just 8 MB of RAM, though. Simple window managers such as fluxbox might work, but not sure.

[darkrose0510]

You might want to try DeLi Linux, it is built for low end hardware (they do their testing on a 486), and has a gui. I've used it on low end machines a number of times with good results, not with less than 16mB of ram though, but it'd be worth a try.

[i92guboj]

It's specs are (8MB Ram, 733mhz, 700MB Hardsik space and runs on the 386 processor)

There must be some confusion there, because there's no such thing as an i386@733 mhz, maybe you meant "33mhz" instead, that's possible and likely. I am not even sure that win98 can operate on 8mb of ram, and I am *almost*sure that it won't ever run on a 386 chip. Maybe you meant to use "i386" as a generic way to reference the intel chips from 386 and above, in which case yours could be a 486 or a pentium, I don't really know.

It used to have Windows 3.1 on it then currently it has Windows 98 which runs very slowly. Could someone kindly advise me as to which Linux OS is best for this system. I heard DamnSmallLinux runs on it but when I read the PC requirements for it on its website it said it needed a minimum of 24MB. Please do kindly help, this is just a hobby of mine to make old PC's work. Have a great week friends.

More ram would help, though that might be completely impossible to find and / or fit in your mainboard.

I suggest doing a search in distrowatch. I made one for you, scroll down here and check that list, maybe there's something suitable:

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

[Hal343]

Win 98 won't run on a 386 with 8 meg ram. Win 3.1 will. So will this, but doesn't have a GUI Ihttp://blueflops.sourceforge.net/

[bigtomrodney]

I don't know about a 386, but I have seen Win98 run on 8MB of RAM and ran it myself on 16MB of RAM for a year or so. It was as slow as treacle but we were in the days before ElTorito Windows discs and I had a hard time getting Win95 back onto the system.

[computerophil]

I don't know about a 386, but I have seen Win98 run on 8MB of RAM and ran it myself on 16MB of RAM for a year or so. It was as slow as treacle but we were in the days before ElTorito Windows discs and I had a hard time getting Win95 back onto the system.

The worst think is that many of the Pages in the internet to search for the drivers doesn't exist anymore. I had w95 for long time but I wouldn't use it nowadays.
w95 is possible with 8MB, 16MB were usual and 32MB luxury.

But best would be a win 3.11 - I am sure.