Which OS?

[ChefJohn]

I have a 600 (currently with Win ME installed - I know but it works).
It has about 128 +/- Mb Ram and a 233 Mhz CPU.
I have a CF to Hard drive adapter and also am purchasing at an 8 GB thumb drive.
I have used a Dlink DWL 650 WifFi card and a Xircom Ethernet/modem combo card (note the "trailing edge" technology here).

If I were to replace the installed hard drive with a CF card(s) and install the thumb drive what would be a good choice as to OS?

I know I should choose something that doesn't require a lot of "disk" access for a swap drive.

But what would be suggestions ?

Linux?
Keep Me?
Get '98?

Thanks

[SAE140]

As CF cards have a finite write-life but don't have any form of write-protection, they are perhaps not the best devices to boot Windows from ... (?) Is there any reason NOT to boot from a Hard Drive ?

The only way I can visualise the booting from a CF card to be a viable proposition is to install more memory, create a large RAMDISK, copy Windows into it on boot, and run programs from there - which is exactly the technique used by "Hiren's Boot CD". For that approach you'd probably be better off using the smaller footprint of Win98Lite, or the mini-Windows that Hiren uses. Of course you could always burn your system to a bootable CD, and use precisely the same technique.

Can't comment on any version of Linux, as despite several attempts, I still can't get me head around it. Maybe someone else on the forum could comment on it's suitability here ?

You don't mention how you're going to install the 'thumb drive' ?
Plugging it directly into the Thinkpad will only give you USB 1.1 speeds, which you might find a tad on the slow side if your applications involve much in the way of file operations.
Installing the drive via a PCMCIA adapter will give you the much higher USB 2.0 speeds.

Colin

[cogitordi]

Elsewhere, I've discussed my Pentium 300 MHz 380z (circa 1998) Thinkpad with 162 MB RAM running a stripped-down Ubuntu Linux OS. Runs beautifully and the package support for the current Ubuntu release (8.04) is "LTS", or Long Term Support, that is until 2011. You just can't beat the kind of support that Ubuntu provides.

I am posting this from the 380z running the latest Firefox. I recommend using the NoScript extension to save you some RAM and improve performance. (It's also an excellent security feature, even if you are quite safe just because it's Linux.) Javascript is a CPU hog.

Download the Minimal ISO. (Burn it somehow.) Install the CLI environment (minimal command line) and then you can use apt-get to install the packages you want.

Post here if you want more information, otherwise I won't bore you (and will save myself the time).

[cogitordi]

ChefJohn, I received your message. I'm happy to help with Linux.
What details would you like? Do you have an Ethernet connection for your Thinkpad?