I need help here, I have an older system and would like to know what the system requirements are for Mandrake 6.0, and 7.0 .... I want to install one of them on my old 486, heres what my system consists of: Intel 486DX-2 66mhz 20mb RAM Trident TVGA Generic VGA video card with 1024kb VID Memory WD Caviar 207mb Hard Drive WD Caviar 342mb Hard Drive 5.25 Floppy , and 3.5 floppy and a 4x CD-ROM Can i install mandrake 6.0, 7.0, or 8.0?!?!??!??

The main Mandrake Distro ie (the one that gets distributed the most) is for i586 (pentium machines) and will not work on your box. However mandrake does release an i386 distro that will work on your box. U might not want to hear this, but I dont think the performance will be that great on a 486, if you want to run x etc. Performance wont be a problem if you are using the console however. Mandrake 8.0, and 7.2 use about 90MB just running X. With only 342 Mb for install space you are going to have some fun ;) i suggest going to www.linuxdoc.org and looking for howtos on installing linux on machines with limited cpu power/hd space/ram. hope this helps.

The i586 versions of Mandrake are optimized for pentium processors that doesn't mean you can't install it on a 486. I had the CD's for the i586 version of Mandrake 7.2 I didn't feel like downloading another version so I installed it on my old 486. The machine is a 486DX 75Mhz, 16mb RAM, 2 160mb hard drives (One for swap one for the rest) Ofcourse I didn't install X because I used it as a server. But it installed without any problems and has been running without problems for a few months now. If you do want to install X I would suggest you do a minimal install first and then install a light window manager like: http://www.xfce.org You could even try mandrake 8. However do keep in mind that running a version optimized for a pentium processor will technically run slower then one optimized for a 486. Mik

Slackware was compiled to run on a 386. I have Slackware 7 running on a 486-66 with 16 megs of ram and Blackbox as my window manager.

Slackware 7.1 runs perfect on 386er DX 33 with 32MB and 2Gb SCSI 1 Harddisk, i use a TSENG ET 4000 Videocard with 1MB and a Soundblaster 1.0 Card, as Windowmanager runs Fvwm2. On my Intel Server 2x 386DX 33,Weitek Coprozessor,256KB Cache ,8MB-Ram, 172Mbyte HD ESDI runs Slackware 3.5 Perfect !!! Minimum for Slackware 3.5 that i have tested is 386SX 16Mhz,6MB Ram,100MB HD, Herculesgfxcard and a special X-Server for Monochrome Hercules. A Minix System requires for good Speed a 80286 8Mhz, 2MB-Ram(better 4MB-Ram),40MB IDE (MFM HDs too slow) Minix runs finally at a 8086 4,77Mhz 640KB Ram ! Sorry my Englisch is bad