[mdlug] Completely replacing Windows 98se with Linux!

[Aaron Kulkis]

rstaff wrote:
> New project.  Goal to completely replace Windows 98 second edition with Linux!
>
> Target PC is a very old CBW Diplomat PC.
> CBW = Computer Builders Warehouse.  The PC was purchased at their West Bloomfield store on Orchard Lake Road.  I don't
> think the store exists anymore.
>
> This PC also has two drives.  Drive #1 has 14 Gb, while drive #2 has 28 Gb.  It has about 524 Mb of memory RAM.  The CPU
> is an Intel Pentium III 598 MHz.  Drive #1 currently houses Win 98se, while drive #2 has Simply MEPIS Linux (version 6 I
> think).
>
> I tried seven supposedly light weight Linux Live CD/DVD distros.  Six of those Live CD/DVD distros experienced a kernel
> panic during the boot process.  One Live CD booted into a usable desktop.
>
> The six that failed were as follows:
>       four Ubuntu based ==> Xubuntu 14.04, Lubuntu 14.04, LXLE 12.04, Puppy Linux.
>       one Debian based ===> Point Linux 2.3 Mate
>       one Slackware based => Porteus 3.0 LXDE
>
> The one that booted into a usable desktop was SliTaz 4.0.  An apparently custom build.
> SliTaz 4 is a mini distribution and live CD designed to run speedily on hardware with 256 MB of RAM.  The SliTaz ISO
> image fits on a less than 30 MB media and takes just 80 MB of hard disk space.  (Source DistroWatch)
>
> On this very old PC, in SliTaz Linux, I was able to play Midi and mp3 music files.
> In Xterm, it took CLI commands as expected.
> SliTaz recognized a 4 port USB hub, along with my USB stick of music and USB WiFi stick.  I was able to connect to a
> neighbor's WiFi network as a guest, sorry Norm.  ;-)  However, the connection was very slow; EarthLink's home page
> eventually loaded; I gave up on waiting for Google's home page.
>
> So...  Can anybody suggest some other light weight distros to experiment with?

I understand the intellectual challenge, but trying to get modern software to run on extremely old
hardware is going to be problematic in and of itself.  For example, for a long time, openSuse was
compiled for the 80386.  No longer.  It's now compiled for what would have been called "80686."

And as time goes on, there is less and less interest in maintaining the code to emulate ancient
sound cards such as the Ad-Lib, and similarly, almost no interest in emulating ancient
graphics cards.