Hello! I have an old 486 running at 33mhz and with 4mb ram, and i want to be able to hook it to my network. I tried dos first, but it couldn't get it on the network, so i tried FreeBSD, didn't boot from the disks, says that it can't find a kernel on the bootdisk, so i looked on the net for some kind of Linux that will run on my hardware. I found 2 alternatives, tomsrtbt wich i don't know if you can install to a harddrive, and minix 3 that requiers a cd-rom. Minix3 Would be great, if it existed on floppies only install, but it appears that you need a cd-rom to install it.. So what can you guys recommend? I wan't a small Linux or similiar that has installation floppies so i can put it on my harddrive. It must fit on the hardrive that is 200mb and it would be great if i could hook it to the network. It must also run on my machine wich has 33mhz 486 and 4mb RAM. Thanks!

DSL is a great Linux that i bilieve would run on your computer Just google "DSL" or "Damn Small Linux" not sure were you can download it from but i used bittorrent to get mine. Heres a page to start looking at any way [url]http://www.damnsmalllinux.org]http://www.damnsmalllinux.org[/url] Ignorance is Bliss but Knowledge is Power

Any help on creating links would be appreciated as i dont seem very good Thanks and good luck getting with DSL Ignorance is Bliss but Knowledge is Power

Thanks but DSL seems to need 16mb RAM and i only have 4mb to play with :S Thanks for the tip, might come in handy :D

16Mb is minimum for X. 4Mb is the minimum for command-line only. DSL might need the ram during the installation process for decompression, but actually running Linux should only take 4Mb. You could pop the hard drive into your XP machine for installation. I'm curious why FreeBSD didn't work. Did you try version 4.11 or something newer? I'd go with 4.11 for that machine.

I was trying to run FreeBSD 6.0, the floppies that is.. I read that the minimum should be a 386 with 4mb of RAM or something, but when i tried to boot it i stopped when i tried to load the kernel for installation, it said that there was no kernel to be found.. FreeBSD would be a great alternative since i've got some (limited) experience of it from before, so it's a pity that it didn't work. :( I might do as you say though and try 4.11? Or maybe some other version that is before 6.0 and see if that makes any difference..

Well i've tried to run it again, this time with 5.4 and boot from the floppy... It says "elf32_loadimage: read failed" And after a few retries it says unable to load kernel!.. Any ideas?