Hi , is possible to run DSL on a 486 with 16 mb ram ?
Can I use fluxbox ?
thanks

If you refer to DSL as the network connection, that should work. However, a 486 with 16 MB is really a pain in the neck.
If you refer to Damn Small linux, see their front page:

What is Damn Small Linux, a.k.a. DSL?
DSL is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.

Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:

* Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
* Boot from a USB pen drive
* Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
* Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
* Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
-> * Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
* Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
* Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize

I have never tried that myself

I can't remember if DSL is now running Fluxbox or if they are still on Blackbox.

Anyway I second the "pain in the neck" part because I used to run Slackware with Fluxbox on a very fast 486 (160Mhz!) with 64 Megs of RAM, and although it worked, it was very slow starting up and using major apps like Firefox (I usually tried to get by with dillo instead). Usually when these distribution authors make minimum requirement claims like this, I think they are assuming you are only going to use the non-graphical text console, which I've run at reasonable speed on a 386sx!

My experience is similar to wartstews. I tried it on an AMD K6 with 24Mb ram, and it was painfully slow. This was running it as a GUI rather than console ( and yes, it is using fluxbox now )

For the DSL part, i wouldn't really know... However, i'm posting this from a Pentium S 166mhz with 16MB EDO RAM. Running Slackware 9.1 with many many upgrades and running fluxbox for a GUI. It's pretty quick booting up and loading XFree. However, when using a machine like this you're limited to using console apps. I use elinks/links/lynx for www browsing, vi/vim for text editing, pebrot for msn messaging and BitchX for IRC. When i have to install/compile software, i exit XFree and stay in console to speed up the process. Hope this helps some!

I run an HD install of DSL on an old toshiba laptop - P166 with 80mb of Ram. It goes fairly fast - can I run firefox (on wireless broadband) and xmms at the same time with no problem, apart from the tinny sound of the speakers.

Exactly (on the success with the 80MB of RAM). It is more the RAM than the processor speed that is the issue here. 32MB is a good absolute minimum for X. I was running tinyX/Kdrive on an old laptop that only had 48Mb and it was quite usable, but generally I'd say you should have at least 64 MB of RAM to run a full blown X server and a reasonable light-weight window manager.

If you don't care if you take a major step back in time, I think I was running the outrageously compacted muLinux on a 486 that might have had only 16 megs of ram. MuLinux normally ran entirely from RAM, but it did have a command to clone itself to a hard drive partition, which you would have to do to fit and all the "add-ons" to give you an X desktop that would run a version 3.x of Netscape Navigator on a 16mb system. MuLinux is still available at: http://mulinux.sunsite.dk. If you really can't get anymore memory into that machine, MuLinux is still fun to play around with and could be the best option for a computer like that. By the time you load up all the modules you will have a "rustic" (using authors own terms) system that can do an amazing number of things considering the whole thing fit on about a half dozen floppies or so (warning, it will expand out to take up most of a 100 meg hard drive by the time you add a reasonable sized (at least 32 MB) swap partition. If anything it is kind of fun to try to figure out all the bazaar hoops the Author jumped through to fit so much functionality on so few floppy disks.

Ok thanks to all ..... I installed DeliLinux ( http://www.delilinux.de/ ) on this pc and it seems to work good ....
I'm not interested in internet with this old machine I need only a word processor and if it's possible a very light mp3 player to read cd ....
In Deli there is siag ( i want to try with abiword ) but there isn't any mp3 player so I want to try with 123mpg or xmms ....
I use fluxbox and it is good
I think that Deli is interesting try it !
Bye bye

PS sorry for my english

That looks like a fine choice. It appears to be based on Slackware-8 which means you can download software for it from http://www.linuxpackages.net, or copy it from a Slackware-8 CD.

I found that you need a least a 133mhz 486 to play 128b/s MP3 files at full fidelity. You can use the downsample and mono options on some players and they may play on a 66 mhz DX2.

Abiword should work fine too, but you'll have to hunt down a bunch of dependent Gnome shared libraries and install them before it will run. The command "ldconfig abiword" will list what you need to have.

DSL on CX166+ and 48MB runs very well. (writing, listening to music, even small video clips, firefox, printing ...). I like it!!! (hd-install)