[CLUE-Tech] booting CD based Linux from old machine

[Evan Widger]

Michael Riversong wrote:
> There's an obscure distribution called Lyconis, and another called 
> Redmond, which can be installed from within Windows.  I've noticed the 
> Redmond comes up well on an autorun on a 166 mHz Gateway from 1997 -- 
> i'd love to install it but don't have a big enough hard drive on that 
> particular machine.
> 
> On Friday, September 19, 2003, at 03:08 PM, WFT wrote:
> 
>> Hello TUX
>>
>> I have an older machine that does
>> not have a BIOS that supports booting
>> from a Knoppix CD.
>>
>> Is there a floppy image that will auto-run
>> and allow booting from a CD ?
>>
>> Gus
>>


other non cd options for older machines include zipslack, which is a 
smallish version of slackware (minus X of course) that fits within 100mb 
  (zip disk size) which works for many basic applications. it also runs 
from a windows partition perfectly fine if you want to dualboot. x can 
be installed later, though.

the other option would be gentoo, which i haven't personally played with 
yet but is an install from scratch linux distro that compiles everything 
native to the machine it's on. the advantages are that it'd be faster 
than any generic kernels, and that since it's all from scratch you 
decide what goes on and don't have hundreds of megs of things you dont 
want. the major drawback on an older machine is that compiling larger 
things will take forever, such that again, things like X may not be a 
viable option.

just my $.02US :)

-Evan