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Re: Installing Debian on 486



On Sat, Aug 12, 2000 at 01:42:18PM -0400, Daniel Stehm wrote:
> Hey guys, having a problem here. I have a 486, 12 megs of RAM, 480
> megs on hard-drive, floppy (3 1/2), and a (gasp) 5 1/2 drive. I want
> to get ANY linux distro on it that I can, (wishing for debian) I dont
> care too much about packages, I just want some form of linux on here.
> I really dont want to take CD-Rom out of this and hook it up to the
> 486's motherboard, etc; etc; or connect them etc; Im hoping, if at all
> possible, from what ive heard its possible to install Linux onto a
> computer using floppies! Thats what im hoping to do, install Linux
> onto this 486 using floppies! If someone would mind telling me how to
> go about doing that, id appreciate it. E-mail is atomicx@exis.net
> Thanks alot

I rolled out my first Debian installation on a similar configuration,
though I had about half the disk.  What are you planning on *doing* with
the box -- it's pretty anaemic buy current standards.  

There is an installation option for, IIRC, slink, which requires a boot
floppy and download image.  If you can get a network connection
(existing DOS/Windows OS, Tom's Root Boot, LinuxCare Bootable Business
Card), you can D/L the image to the HD.  It's then used in installation.

I'd partition you HD as follows:

  /		 48 MB
  swap   36-48 MB * 
  /tmp	 16 MB
  /var   48 MB
  /usr  300 MB
  /home  20 MB

  * High relative to physical RAM, but low given typical task 
    requirements.

You don't have a lot of leeway, but this should give you a basic sever
setup with a few development packages (enough to build a kernel), and
possibly even X, though you'd be better of putting cliet support on this
box an running the display elsewhere.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>     http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
 Evangelist, Opensales, Inc.                    http://www.opensales.org
  What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?   Debian GNU/Linux rocks!
   http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/    K5: http://www.kuro5hin.org
GPG fingerprint: F932 8B25 5FDD 2528 D595 DC61 3847 889F 55F2 B9B0

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