if you just want it to player music then you don't need an interface at all. xmms can play music via the command line. i'm at TAFE at the moment so i can't look look at my slackware box to tell you the command, but xmms can play music/CD's via the command line. and pretty much every full distro out there has xmms.

I still do not know what distro to use!

My suggestion would be Zipslack
You will want to use all the workarounds for low memory you can find mentioned.
Command line/console only.

Slackware is my distro of choice. but according to there website it's min requirements is 16 mg http://www.slackware.com/install/sysreq.php

but i can't see why any command line interface would need more than 8 mg

so i'd make a listing on the slackware forum and ask them if you can run command line slackware with 8 mgs.

Hope you get a reply soon.

slackware includes lowmem.i compiled kernal, which will work on 386 with low memory, as you have a 486, you won't have a problem.

just select a minimal amount of applications, when you install it.

command line only needs 2mb ram anyway.

Install Debian Potato with IceWM... it is veeery old distro but I don't think something else will run.

I think it still can be downloaded from internet.

I used to run Debian Potato on same HW... with X - it was a bit sloooow but it had run...

If you want to run distro on computer that able to run Win95 - pick up something from 1995-1998 released period...

Also on such old computer it is better to run in Text mode and for graphical apps only run X.

Try mulinux, it works on T4700CS tosiba laptop 486/DX2 50mgh 344 mhd and has some of the things your looking for

If you already have a PC going on the web
then why not use this box as a linux or BSD firewall
I think IP Cop might run on a system like this
Monowall ( BSD ) should, It is a live CD
the only issue is that you might need another NIC unless you use dial-up

floppy

I do not really need a firewall, besides how would I benefit from one? muLinux looks interesting but i you know of something better than post here.

windows 95 minimum requirements were 8mb ram, it could run also with 4mb ram, (it would be very slow) but no less than 4 mb ram, i have a oem cd next to me dated august 2005, after all windows 95 was the first microsoft gui os to use 32 bit protected mode code in the kernal.

windows 3x requirements were less demanding, depending on the version you were running, you needed to install winsock to get tcp/ip daemon.
That was the first windows that internet could be used on.

You could install freedos and run arachne, there is no multi-user mode of couse. http://home.arachne.cz/

the linux kernal is a 32 bit protected mode kernal, so its requirements are the same as windows 95, i should say windows 95 is the same as linux kernal, as it came a few years before.

you could try puppy linux http://www.goosee.com/puppy/

as someone mentioned before try tinyx, its a modified x-server, known now as drive k http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/kdrive.html

whatever anyone says you will be able to use linux cli with 2mb ram and proberly the gui with 4mb ram, it won't be smooth, neither was windows 95 with 4mb ram, you have 8 mb ram so it will be fine.

good luck

i found this while searching the internet
http://tiny.seul.org/en/index.html


Tiny Linux will run with 8mb ram and if you read the faq , 4mb ram is possible, with a gui.

http://www.volny.cz/basiclinux/

you can have a gui with 3mb ram , that proberly is the lowest i have seen for a gui, windows 95 cannot run on 3mb ram.

Ok, I tried some of these an decided it just was not worth it to resurrect that machine. It belongs in the past, so I took everything useful out of it and threw the rest away. I really did not see the need to use it really, after a while. I'm fine with what I have, which is a couple dozened times faster anyways. PC's are so cheap nowadays. Thanks for all the suggestions, though.

This is a pity. I have "resurrected" my old laptop with a Pentium Classic 120 MHz, 40 MB RAM and a non-DMA 2GB harddisc. And it runs great with Slackware and Fluxbox, although the hardware is not *that* much better than what you have.

If I could motivate you to give it another try, I'd suggest that you try Amigo. Search for posts by gnashley on LinuxQuestions --- he has provided tons of tips and created this really neat full-featured but minature sized Linux distribution, based on Slackware 9.1.

gargamel