View topic - Linux on an Ancient Toshiba laptop. - Windows, Apple, Application, Abandonware and Game Beta Downloads/Repository

voyager8907

I have a Toshiba portage 3440CT (I think) from somewhere around 1999 with a 20 GB HDD and somewhere around 80 or so MBs of ram.

I am getting sick of running Windows FLP on it because windows is boring and I want to try and use the laptop as a test PC for lite linux distros.

What linux distro do you guys think I should run on it?

compgeke

Damn Small Linux.

DBlake

Puppy might run on that.

Someguy2

Vector Linux.

zinamo

you can also try Xubuntu... it should be ok with your hardware specs, and has many features!

voyager8907 · Last edited by voyager8907 on Sat Jun 11, 2011 12:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

I am thinking about using ether DSL or Lucid Puppy but I haven't decided yet.
I will get some specs of the laptop tomorrow.
And about Xubuntu the laptop would hardly be able to run xubuntu.
I remember trying to run Longhorn Build 4074 on it.
It didn't like that...Literally.

PortalCake

Arch Linux + tint2 +dwm/xmonad/openbox.

retroOS

slackware is good on the older machines

compgeke

Well, based on the specs here: http://www.toshiba-europe.com/bv/comput ... roduct.htm, the system doesn't support enough ram to even run Windows 2000 nicely because 2000 was slower than [self-censored] on a Pentium III 750 with 160 megs of ram.

Quote:

Just wondering, what was it that so many companies sold Windows 2000 laptops with 64 megs of ram and a 6 gig hard drive?

linuxlove

compgeke wrote:

Well, based on the specs here: http://www.toshiba-europe.com/bv/comput ... roduct.htm, the system doesn't support enough ram to even run Windows 2000 nicely because 2000 was slower than [self-censored] on a Pentium III 750 with 160 megs of ram.

I dunno, Windows 2000 ran alright on a Pentium 75 and 40MB of RAM.

voyager8907

Well the laptop has a pentium 3 processor and it can run Windows 2000 but the problem is it needs the recovery disc to install Windows 2000 as it does not let any other Windows 2000 discs find its hard drive.
My grandad installed Windows XP on it and it run horribly slow but he wouldn't listen to me when I told him it wasn't designed for it.
It will run Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
It does not boot linux mint...I've already tried that.

UPDATE:I'm sure it has way more ram than 64.
I think it has 120.

UPDATE:It has 194 MBs of ram and a somewhere around 500 MHz Intel Pentium 3 Processor.

dharma

DSL should be fine, I have installed it on celeron 900 and 64m ram with no problem.

Ohno1234567890

You could possibly try nlite and strip down windows xp or windows 2000.
Here is the link might be something you might want to check into
http://www.nliteos.com/
here are the how to's and stuff http://www.nliteos.com/guides.html

voyager8907

Ohno1234567890 wrote:

You could possibly try nlite and strip down windows xp or windows 2000.
Here is the link might be something you might want to check into
http://www.nliteos.com/
here are the how to's and stuff http://www.nliteos.com/guides.html

I want to totally replace windows not strip it down.
Besides its already running a striped down version of Windows XP which is called Windows FLP.

Ohno1234567890

Well not to be a tool

but you can strip down windows Xp down to about 80-90 megs
i got as low as 20 megs of ram on a Virtual machine :OD

But i am with the rest dsl is the way to go :cool:

voyager8907

I'll probably have to go with DSL because it is lite and easy to use.
I'm still thinking about putting Fedora 15 on my Vista laptop.

saiflu

Here are some options for each type of o/s's you can use.
Windows = 95, 98, 2k, ME, XP FLPS
OS X = 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3,
Linux = Slackware, Puppy, others.

linuxlove

saiflu wrote:

OS X = 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3,

Not on a PC.

voyager8907

saiflu wrote:

Here are some options for each type of o/s's you can use.
Windows = 95, 98, 2k, ME, XP FLPS
OS X = 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3,
Linux = Slackware, Puppy, others.

All the windows versions you listed (Except for XP) need to be installed via the laptops recovery disk.
Which I don't have.
And you can't run the Mac OS on a computer.

os2fan2

Any flavour of OS/2 runs quite nicely in 40 MB of ram.

I once conned Windows 98 to run quite fast in 16 MB ram using 98lite. Even with IE6 it still ran much faster than the default install.

You could go really retro with Windows NT 3.51, or NT 4.0, or even some kind of DOS/Windows. 3.51 and 4 don't have built-in browsers, so you need some other means of getting it on. You can install NT into the hard drive on some other machine, and let the install run the second part on the local box.

voyager8907

os2fan2 wrote:

Any flavour of OS/2 runs quite nicely in 40 MB of ram.

I once conned Windows 98 to run quite fast in 16 MB ram using 98lite. Even with IE6 it still ran much faster than the default install.

You could go really retro with Windows NT 3.51, or NT 4.0, or even some kind of DOS/Windows. 3.51 and 4 don't have built-in browsers, so you need some other means of getting it on. You can install NT into the hard drive on some other machine, and let the install run the second part on the local box.

NT 4.0 needs the recovery disk (which I don't have) and I have never actually managed to get Windows NT 3.51 to successfully install.

tristan439

Puppy Linux. I got it working on a machine older than yours.

jasonmerc

Totally use Puppy Linux. They recently came out with a (Wary Puppy) Long Term Support release, which works pretty well (I tried it). Puppy's CD image only takes up about 110 MB, so I'd imagine a HDD install shouldn't be much more.

voyager8907

tristan439 wrote:

Puppy Linux. I got it working on a machine older than yours.

Puppy Linux is ok...
I'm most likely going to see if it runs Haiku.

kpropell

Look around at http://distrowatch.com!
The search function on that site is very good, example this is a search for distro's aimed at old computers:
http://tinyurl.com/distrooldcomputer

You could also use an older version of any distro for funsies :wink:

Linux on an Ancient Toshiba laptop.

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