Installing Gentoo on a really old laptop

Xylene · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 01 Sep 2003 Posts: 111

I want to install Gentoo on my old laptop, but I am not sure how possible it will be. The machine is an Acer 760c, 486DX2 50mhz CPU, 12MB RAM, 325MB HDD, a floppy drive and a PCMCIA NIC. The NIC is a SOHOware ND5120-E which is ne2000 compatible, afaik.

What I need to know is whats the most painless way to install Gentoo on this machine. I have another Gentoo box that I could setup distcc on possibly and use that if someone points me in the right direction. Thanks in advance.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2004 7:59 pm Post subject:

Xylene,

You are never going to get more than a command line box with only 12Mb RAM.

If you want Gentoo, you will have to install the GRP. I don't know if it supports an i486.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Xylene · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 01 Sep 2003 Posts: 111

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2004 8:47 pm Post subject:

Xylene,

You need to start with a mini distro, one or two floppies or even tiny hdd install in what will become your swap partition.

You are probably going to have to build a kernel module for your chosen 'get-u-going' distro to make your PCMCI network card work, maybe even a whole kernel.

I'm not making any reccomendations for your startup distro. Google around
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

You can better try it with deli-linux.
325 MB Hdd is not enough for Gentoo.
As i read deli-linux can run with X and 12 MB of RAM.