Maybe It's stupid to waste time on all these operating systems, especialy since multiple hard drive partitions are beginning to anoy me. Worse yet, I have always hated pee seas. But if *have* to use one, I might as well have some fun with it.:) I want to install OS/2 Warp 4, Windows 98SE/NT4, Xenix, and AIX all ont my ThinkPad 760XD. Yes, it will all fit on one hard drive. But if I get a second (or third or fourth...) drive, I might as well boot something from it. Is there a Linux that will run well on a 166Mhz Pentium MMX ? My Desktop has a 450Mhz Pentium II, but I'm working on upgrading it to a 550 Mhz PIII. Is there a Linux that will run well on that? Can Linux be installed to a FAT32 drive and boot from it? If not, can it read/write FAT32? What are the differences bettween the different versions of Linux, including GUIs and system requirements? Which Linux is IBM supporting?

I've been experimenting with Linux for a little under 2 yrs now. There are literally 100's of different versions (distros) to choose from. Most of them are just variations of other distros. For instance, Ubuntu is based on Debian, but there are also variations of Ubuntu such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Fluxbuntu. The main difference is the Desktop Environment (DE) that's used. The DE is the collection of icons, windows, menus, folders, etc...basically the user interface. There are several of them...Gnone, KDE, Xfce, to name a few. Here's 12 examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deskto... What's nice about the majority of distros is that you can run then directly off the CD without having to install anything. It doesn't run as well as an actual install, but it's good for trial purposes until you find something you like. For an old 166MMX, you could try Puppy or DSL (Damn Small Linux). The system requirements for each distro is different so you'd have to do some research. There are a few distros that will run with just 64MB RAM, but I'd recommend 128MB as the minimum. http://distrowatch.com/ "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

How much ram on each machine? larry

64Mb epandable to 104Mb in the 166Mhz notebook, 768Mb (the max...?) in the 450Mhz PII desktop. Where do I get Linux? Downloading a 648 Mb CD image is *not* an option! (Ihave dial-up) I am not impressed by the fact that Debian comes on *21* CD images. I've heard of bloatware, but this is rediculous!!!

BW2 you have posted in nearly every forum and still keep asking basic questions, I am not interested you hate PC's, I am not interested you do not have ADSL Broadband. Everything you asked can be found GOOGLING!! Anyway why not buy a decent PC and install XP and run all the other O/Ses in a Virtual PC Environment ? PuppyLinux is good for low power PC/Laptop's if you insist and you can use Grub boot loader, as i believe you want: MS-DOS OS/2 W3.x W95 W98 ME NT4 Linux etal You can buy Linux CD's http://www.cheeplinux.com/ but the P166 lappy may not support CD Booting "Which Linux is IBM supporting?" This is irrelevent as IBM sold of their retail PC/Laptop Business, the Linuxes they support is in relation to server applications.......

I have tried googling and found very little. I mentioned having dial-up so so people like you won't say something ridiculously nasty like "you download it stupid". Instead you post ridiculously nasty stuff like this. Why? I have a decent pee sea and you couldn't pay me to put XP on it. It's the ugliest version of windows I've ever seen. I think it was designed by Fisher Price.

yes the 166, laptop may not boot from the cd. You can boot the cd's on the other machine and create a boot floopy for both puppy & damn small linux. You may need internet access on the 450 to do this. Which brings us to another subject, dial-up. If you are using a external hardware modem, no problem but, if it an internal modem, it may not be detected. You just have to boot the cd, and see if it detects the modem. Also your dialup isp, has to be one that does not require you use there software, like aol or netzero. www.copper.net is one that only reqiure a user id, password & phone number. I have used dialup on many versions of linux, with copper as my isp. the machine with 768mb of ram, has many more options. http://distrowatch.com/ larry