On Wed, 20 Nov 2002, Wookey wrote: > On Wed 20 Nov, David B Harris wrote: > > On Wed, 20 Nov 2002 14:09:59 +0200 > > Michelle Konzack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hello laptop.deb's, > > > > > > I have gotten a NEW OLD LAptop and I like to install Debian. > > > MS-Dos 6.2 was no problem, but... it's a Microsoft product. > > > > > > Which Version of Debian is recommended ? > > > > > > bo, hamm, slink, potatop or woody ? > > > > > > Oh yes, I have no CD and no lpd-port. Only one Floppy and mono-display. > > > > > > Generaly I like to run Lyx, a webbrowser and a MUA like balsa. > > > > With only four megs of memory, you'll not be able to run any of those > > versions listed. > > There is a whole 4mb-laptop HOWTO, which shows that it is possible to run > Linux on such machines, but it's true - in practice doing much useful in a > 4MB machine requires an 'embedded device' mentality, and Debian is not > really set up for that as supplied. And most embedded devices these days > have a lot more than 4MB RAM :-) > > Woody has been installed on an 16MB Psion5mx with 64MB CF card, but you > wouldn't want anything much smaller.
You can certainly get by with only 8Megs RAM. The way I do this is by getting a really old linux, say, redhat 5.x, and installing that. Export the drive over NFS, get a remote computer to 'rm -rf' the redhat install, copy (some of the) the debian system from the remote computer. Specify all the packages you want on the small-RAM computer by doing a "dpkg --get selections > small-packages.txt ; emacs small-packages.txt ; dpkg --set-selections < small-packages.txt", chrooting to the small-RAM computer's NFS mount, and doing a dpkg-upgrade. About a day's work. A kinda HOW-TO is here: http://www.astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/code/nfs-bind.txt My small RAM box works beautifully now. Not too shabby as a NFS server and firewall. -- TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/ If my head were spinning at relativistic speeds, it would appear to everyone else that my brane had slowed down. (unattributed, because it so accurately describes me)
