Running Linux

Downloading files and installing Linux

There are so many Linux distributions that can be used on this old PC. I searched and looked at requirements that came up.
So list of i considered:

• Tiny Core Linux
• Puppy Linux
• DeLi Linux
• BasicLinux
• Damn Small Linux

So first i downloaded DSL (Damn Small Linux). It has nice boot and great selection of settings. But it was really slow. So i was thinking maybe Tiny Core Linux. Not good, minimum RAM is to high. Finally i came across BasicLinux. I used version 2.1 http://www.nomdo.nl/linux.htm.

I fallowed instructions to boot from DOS drive. It booted up fine.

So i set up the hard drive and downloaded all files needed to boot it from disk. The, when all was OK, i added X Server. It worked.

Standard setup has only video server for 640x480x4 color mode. No hardware acceleration. Downloaded S3 X Server from Slackware mirror. Used Slackware 7.1 version for that. After some setup in configuration files i wrote in console:

startx

And i got my GUI running in 800x600x16 mode. I can use 24 bit color mode, but resolution is lower.

Opera

Final thing was adding Opera 8.54. Could not find it anywhere. After heavy searching finally found version that was needed. Installed it and started surfing.

Current blog

Maybe newer version of Opera works better.
I did not bother installing OpenOffice 1.1.5.

Browsing 

Browsing is problematic with https, some pages do not load.

Facebook works fine.

https://mbasic.facebook.com/

486 Computer

So i have computer with 486 CPU, 16 MB RAM.
I am planning to use Windows 95/Slackware Linux OS on this PC.
Also surfing on the web and doing some word processing and multimedia. Seems impossible with today's standards.

To be fair, i have all ready done some of these things. But its better to document all of this.

Specs for the PC