I had an idea recently. I would like to install a very minimal Linux/Debian base on the family 486. I already have a little LAN going here, using the 192.168.1.X subnet. We have three (sometimes four) computers connected, using coax/BNC and terminators. Everything is great, I even have samba set up so I can print, through magicfilter, to the BJC-4000 on my father's win95 machine. But the 486 is unsuited for connecting to the net. My brothers and mother use it for word processing (which I will leave that way, since I don't want to teach them LaTeX) and browsing the web. They do this fairly often but not for long periods. The 486 has a 14.4 modem, unfortunately. What I was hoping to do was to install a tiny linux distro on, say, 80 megs of HD space (it only has 400 megs total). I would install just the bare minimum for net connectivity, rudimentary system administration, and XFree86. I was wondering if this is possible in 80 megs? The purpose would be to start X in broadcast mode (or whatever it's called) so that the machine would basically become a glorified X terminal to my computer, so that my brothers can log on to MY box, and use MY netscape, and most importantly, my ppp connection at 33.6 kbps. This would double their bandwidth, and Netscape wouldn't be so piggish loading javascript and so forth. Is this possible? If so, what is the bare minimum I need. How do I get started? Is there a bootdisk package? I can copy any debs I need from my computer over to the share drive on the win95 machine, but I'm wondering how I should go about creating a partition for ext2fs, and how to install the kernel, etc. Should I just compile a tiny minimalist kernel there? And most importantly, where do I get fips? Thanks. -- kiyan@iname.com A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing A. Kiyan Azarbar its opponents and making them see the light, but Ottawa, Canada rather because its opponents eventually die and a Linux 2.0.33 new generation grows up that is familiar with it. 1024/0x9A9EC5EA 4F3ADBDA1EE5850209DD8BB205250ED2F696A7BE ^- Max Planck
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