Oops. 1 Gig Recommendation 2nd try.

["Richard Flood" <reflood@mail.ev1.net>]

Sorry about the premature send.  Shall I continue?

Anyway, I am attempting to put Linux on a little 1 Gig harddrive 
for a surplus laptop I had laying about.  Thanks to the helpful 
responses to my "Floppy time" post last week, I have proceeded to 
installing actual packages on the drive.  The method I chose was 
to buy a $15 connector to let me install the drive in my desktop 
machine which has a CD-ROM.  A couple of problems have arisen, 
however.

System: NEC Versa 4230  (Pentium 133)
RAM: 16MB
Disk: 1 GB
Drives: Floppy only
Network/Modem: None

Purpose for this machine:  I want to create and run shell and C 
programs as taught by "Linux Programming" by Wrox press.  This 
teaches shell programming, C/C++ programming, and Tk/Tcl

1)  I used the CDs for Mandrake 8.0 because I had them handy.  I 
haven't acquired the Debian disks yet.  I don't have a good 
understanding of the comparison of these, but I had serious 
trouble installing the necessary packages to accomplish my goal.  
Does Debian require less overhead to run X, or am I just stuck 
with a console box?

2)  When I moved the HD back to the laptop, it canceled out a lot 
of stuff because Mandrake's install program sensed all the 
architecture of my desktop machine (Dual processor slot, USB, 256M 
Ram, good Video card, etc.)  When it came up in X, the screen was 
truncated and the system wouldn't come all the way up.  Possible 
cause: I didn't create a swap partition because I didn't have 
enough space for all the files.

Any guidance on how to get the programming tools, emacs editor, 
and X on the same box without clogging up all 1 GB?  I suspect the 
MAndrake packages were just a bit heavy and perhaps Debian's or 
someone else's would be more petite.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
RF
Richard Flood
San Antonio, TX 

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