Hello dudes! A firend of mine is trying to build a small home network (LAN) and he intends to use his old 386 machine as a server. At the moment this machine has Windows 3.1 installed. Apparently, Windows 3.1 is not the best choice for running a server on, so we decided to install Linux. The machine's HDD volume is 81 MB, so we needed a small linux distribution. We tried to install muLinux on a floppy disk but something went wrong and we were unable to even launch the OS. My question is: what is a good Linux distribution that would do the job in this case? It should be small (less than 81 MB) and light and it should be easy to use since we are both newbies in the world of Linux. Thanks!

What services do you want this server to provide? Have you tried FreeSCO? It can provide the following: * a simple bridge with up to 10 Ethernet segments * a router with up to 10 Ethernet segments * a dialup line router * a leased line router * an Ethernet router * a dial-in server with up to 10 modems (with multiport modems). * a time server * a dhcp server * a http server * a ftp server * a dns server * a ssh server * a print server (requires TCP/IP printing client software) And all this fits onto a bootable floppy which you don't even need to install to your hard drive. http://www.freesco.org/

Will he not also need smb to allow his Windows PC (I'm assuming) to connect to share on this server ?

Hmmm...I didn't think about windoze...I very rarely do! He could still use FTP/HTTP to transfer files but if the hard drive is only 81Mb there is not going to be much room to store files on the server. The windoze PCs on the network will still be able to talk to each other and transfer files without having samba on the server as one of the workstations will become browse master.

I think you will find DamnSmall linux useful for your purpose.