Thinkpads Forum

Hello, I have been scrounging around for something up-to-date (last 6 years) and somewhat useful to put on my Thinkpad, its specs are as follows;

300mhz PII
96mb ram
5Gb HDD
1024x768 13.3" screen


I have updated the bios, but otherwise I won't be putting any resources into this. Unless I magically find some parts at goodwill or other thrift stores for a good steal.

I tried Vector 7 Light, ran into a number of issues, but I have gotten it to the x desktop once. It seems pretty up-to-date and claims to be able to run on systems with as little as 64mb ram on a minimal install. I've never really had it up and running so that's just their opinion at the time being.

I have downloaded Slackware 10, I have downloaded the ISO's but have found some parts of the install process confusing. I will be looking into this further although it is quite outdated.

I also tried out Ubuntu 4.10 and Debain 3r1, however these are very outdated and appear to hog quite a bit of ram.

I have looked into DSL and Puppy, but the variants for legacy hardware (eg; Wary 5.5) are fairly outdated, and the tutorials on a hard drive install are uncear to me. Might look into this.

So there are the options I have come up with, I would appreciate any advice on these, or and more distro suggestions.

Thank you,

Wary puppy should install and should run fine on 96mb ram. It idles at ~30mb at desktop on my 600X. Make sure to install and use the Dillo browser. Very fast and will render most pages except javascript heavy sites well, while only taking up a few mb at most.

Other than that, you could look into tinycore linux, though it is quite an experience to install and configure. It is the smallest distro with a 15mb ISO or 9mb iso with only terminal and no X.

There's also AntiX, which is pretty light.

For browsing try
~$ links2 -g

I have a laptop with the exactly same hardware and I use AntiX on it. AntiX is lightweight enough, but also large enough to have most of the things modern OS should have to be convenient for everyday use (albeit I don't use that laptop every day, rather every half a year).

AntiX works for my 600x (with 650MHz CPU + 576mb RAM)
-- and even my old Toshiba Tecra 780cdm (with 266MHz CPU +160mb RAM).

The latest version (v15, 2015) download:

- http://sourceforge.net/projects/antix-l ... /MX-krete/

Earlier version (v13, 2013) download:

- http://sourceforge.net/projects/antix-l ... les/Final/

FWIW, Puppy Linux was also mentioned somewhere as good for really old Thinkpads, but it didn't work for me the 1st time I tried it. If AntiX doesn't work for you, that might be worth a try...

Update: AntiX-16 just came out:

- https://sourceforge.net/projects/antix- ... /antiX-16/

Testing it on one of my A31p, so far so good (600x next to test)!

Pretty cool, there are 3 options to install: Core (command line), or Base, or Full installs and it is available in 386 and x64 so 6 different options all from 200-730MB.

AntiX Linux is well worth a look.

I currently use Tweak OS, but I'll probably switch to AntiX soon as well.

When considering upgrading this 600/600E to full 512MB, use PC100 or PC66 low density 256MB modules. Helps so much with linux.
These vintage line are so sensitive about memory that they can take. 600X takes anything easily.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

One flavour of Linux that has not been mentioned so far in this thread (I think ) is Crunchbang Linux. It works well on my T23s, and I think I may have put it on one of my 600 machines -- I haven't looked at them in a while, so I can't be sure. Anyway, it might be worth a try. It is a light OS at 790 MB, and you can find more information here:

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distr ... crunchbang

Good luck, I would love to hear what you have done so far since this thread was started a couple of years ago.

Sudevan

Philip Newborough announced on 6 February 2015 that he had stopped developing CrunchBang and that users would benefit from using vanilla Debian. Some Linux distributions have arisen in its place in an effort to continue its environment. BunsenLabs is produced by some of the power user from the old Crunchbang forum.

I missed crunchbang too and after searching for a while i have finally gotten the same/similar setup
plus on ubuntu ( not debian ) .. i cannot believe this OS is not more known
gobang

its crunchbang on ubuntu .. amazing in my opinion

check it out

Neil, thanks for that information. I have not been following developments with Crunchbang, but I'm sorry to see it go.

Farro, I'll take a look at Gobang. I hope it is useful for running on some of the older machines.

Sudevan

#!'s successor is BunsenLabs Linux.

I run it, and recommend it. Great distro, best I've ever used and I've been using linux since the SuSE 4.x days.

https://www.bunsenlabs.org/installation ... quirements
says BunsenLabs needs 256mb of RAM. That's more than the 96mb the OP has in his 600.