SlackWare

The main advantage of Slackware distributions of Linux is that they are minimalistic, taking up less space and requiring less hardware resources in general. see http://www.slackware.com The quickest way to get running is to UnZip the ZipSlack onto your DOS drive and boot it with LoadLin.

A disadvantage is that the installation/update procedure is pretty minimalistic, i.e. does not use RPM? like RedHat. Instead, it uses its own installpkg &/or pkgtool.

Note that the 2.0.x series kernels are more suited to older Pentiums and 486's than the 2.4 kernel--which in many distributions is compiled only for the x686. But beware that for some of the 2.0.x kernels, they are compiled with libc5, so the version of UnZip or wget you copy over from a newer distro may not work.

Details by release

Slackware 8 uses the Linux kernel 2.2.19 (and includes 2.4.5)

7.1 uses kernel version 2.2.16 --mirror: http://ftp.eecs.umich.edu:80/pub/linux/slackware

4.0 -- kernel 2.2.6 -- mirror: http://telia.dl.sourceforge.net/mirrors/slackware

3.9 -- kernel 2.0.37 -- mirror: http://ftp.in-span.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.slackware.com

3.6 -- kernel 2.0.35 -- binaries are linked with old-school libc5 (great for TomsRtBt)

3.4 -- kernel 2.0.30 -- last to be able to be installed entirely from floppy

references (mostly about ObsoleteHardware?)

http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2001/1001.xterminal4.html

http://people.we.mediaone.net/mbelange/linux/slack34_umsdos.html

http://website.lineone.net/~brichardson/linux/4mb_laptops/4mb_Laptops.html

http://eddie.cis.uoguelph.ca/~tburgess/local/Small-Memory.html

http://www.linuxhelp.net/guides/morbidangel/old-pcs.shtml