Author Topic: Can linux run on 486 old computer (Read 14926 times)

ajayamar · « **on:** April 22, 2004, 03:08:35 PM »

Hi..
Guys. I am not against windows nor in favour of linux. Currently I am sitting on a 486 with 32 MB EDO RAM. Well i am chating , searching and doing lots of thing from this computer.
Can linux do that ? on a 486, ie.. this much old computere ? ofcourse I am not talking about text mode ..

aaa · « **Reply #1 on:** April 23, 2004, 07:21:59 PM »

Linux can work on 386 or greater. Not every distribution can, though, because they optimize for newer cpus. Slackware can run on a 486, and older versions can run on a 386. You need 16mb of ram for a gui in Slack. You will obviuosly not be able to run something fancy like KDE, it will be intolerably slow.

dragoncity99 · « **Reply #2 on:** April 24, 2004, 08:27:31 AM »

What aaa said is true, if u want to try, u can use RedHat 7.1 as what in my University does. Haha, it will crawl the PC even opening one small window.

However, if u don't want to go thru the installations, try diskless linux. Meaning u use distros such as Knoppix to run linux from Cd.

ajayamar · « **Reply #3 on:** April 24, 2004, 01:12:12 PM »

I don't want to do any thing on that .. I just want to say that I have used linux on variety of hardware configuration and at the end I found that win98 was running smooth on that PC .(486) and also I want to say that linux can't do as win98 was able to provide all modern functioning without much probs..

dragoncity99 · « **Reply #4 on:** April 27, 2004, 03:53:07 PM »

It depends on what u do ajayamar.

For me, it works perfect for Linux as a router, firewall and DHCP server. Smooth, clean, simple and Free of charge (haha, i find ppl to donate me 486 machines.)

aaa · « **Reply #5 on:** April 28, 2004, 12:07:58 AM »

If you can find a ligtweight desktop environment that has what you need but isn't too big (like gnome/kde), then you're good to go:

icewm
blackbox/fluxbox/openbox
xfce
fvwm2