I got a very old pc. I wanted to make a dual-boot OS on it.. One for Win95\DOS (for playing classic games) and the other a Linux distro that would work with this very old hardware.. Just something functionable, so that I can browse the internet, download small files, view pics.. you know stuff like that..

Here are the specs:
Pentium (Im guessing its 133Mhz)
16mb Ram
Matrox MGA Mystique Powerquest
Sound Blaster 16

Somebody please tell me what OS I could use for the pc coz I really wanna fix it?

Go for Slackware minimal install with cholesterol free desktop environment

that's right. keep that old iron ticking.

here are some ideas you might try. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ "damn small linux" is just what it advertises. It is based off debian, so if you are comfortable with that you should have no problems. Alternatively you could just run debian (download just the first iso and get everything else from the net), but be sure to install all the packages manually or you will get a lot of bloat. I have done a debian install that took up as little as 200 MB of HD and I had blackbox, xmms, etc.

Alternatively if you are into RPM based distros you could look for an older version of RedHat or try peanut linux. Of all these suggestions, personally I have only tried debian, so I'm not the best source, but maybe that will get you started.

cheers

I had Fedora Core 1 working on a P133 with 64 megs and a 4 gig HD. It took about 5 minutes to boot, but was useable.

You are really asking for a big hobby you know-- but you'll learn a lot!!
Dual boot systems usually
require quite a bit of tweaking, and now you want to boot both with old hardware.

Assume you'll have to mess with this
for a while. I'd recommend getting Linux running first, then doing what is needed to
get DOS/Windows running (including starting from scratch and wiping the Linux partition to
do it), then go back and resize the running DOS partition and stick linux back on.

Linux itself is quite tight in most distros, but the GUI sucks up memory and MIPS. So part of what you
are asking is what window manager to run (and most distros come with a choice). "Fluxbox" is
one of the lightest window managers out there.

WHere I am heading with this is Knoppix and Damn Small Linux ("DSL"). I don't know how well
vanilla Knoppix will run on your machine (for sure you'd want to change the window manager
to fluxbox from the KDE default), but Knoppix is what you need to know about if you'll be messing with old hardware a lot. (It's biggest strength is auto detection and configuration, and it
boots right from CD-ROM letting you see how well it will work with minimum fuss.)

If you determine that Knoppix is too big for you go right to
www.damnsmalllinux.org. Here is a quote from the lead developer of DSL.
"DSL is highly efficient: it has run successfully on a 486DX2 processor and on only 16 MB of RAM."

I am assuming there is a CD-ROM in this PC. Life is easiest if you can actually boot from this CD ROM,
which would require changing your BIOS settings to allow. Your old PC may not support this at all.
That's OK.

For DOS bootdisks, try.
Check out this site: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm (for your DOS side).

Windows95 in 16 MByte? I think that was part of original specs, but don't expect it to run
very well. (It may have required 32 MByte even then.)

Let me know how this works for you. Scoring some additional memory for that old machine may be
worth the $20 it will cost you. I'd also recommend buying the book "Knoppix Hacks", which includes a Knoppix CD for free, but more importantly really explains how to go about using
old hardware. But if your goal is to spend $0, your project as you stated it is possible.

It would seem that delilinux would be great for your system
http://delilinux.berlios.de/

It should run like greased lightning on that pc.

Also try older versions of Vector Linux:
www.vectorlinux.com

Vijay

Wow! Thanks for the great replies , I'll do my bit of research and get back to you on my project.. Keep me posted with whatever advice you have

Feather linux has the same requirements as Damn Small, but it is much more complete.
Any chance you could increase that RAM? For linux the amount of RAM is more important than the processor.

Delilinux would work good (wrote the guide on thier homepage) But if you want a dual boot you should try grey cat linux...sorry I don't have a link to it, just google it. The reason Grey Cat Linux would be perfect for you is cuz it runs under UMSDOS (which i thing stands for "under microsoft disk operating system) You will only need one partition for both operating systems and no boot loader configuration. Youjust have to run "loadlin" or create a batch file that will switch from DOS/9x to linux for you. Works flawlessly and grey cat has the bare minimal hardware requirements (386 processor....even ur PC has it beat)

A UMSDOS-based Linux is a great idea, if you are still doing research on this!
Am also using Amigo Linux on a Pentium 100 w/16 MB RAM.
Amigo Linux's website is http://www.amigolinux.org/
and its LQ forum is at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...php?forumid=56
You carry out nearly the same steps for Amigo Linux as you do for Grey Cat Linux. Grey Cat Linux was put together by a Peter de Koning of the Nederlands(Holland) in Europe. Not able to access his Grey-Cat-Linux-specific page at site http://www.dekoningonline.nl/,
but did access GCL download site at, http://www.pcpages.com/greyclinux/, if this helps!

Best of luck!!

And BTW, my favorite method would be to use the Sarge net installer. Once the base system is installed, I'd choose only what is compatible with my hardware. In order to achieve this, though, a pretty good knowledge of Debian is needed.

Slackware has very small hardware requirements, an older pre libc6 version of Slackware, 3.x or so, might be the best choice because it would need less memory.

I'm with him. Debian has a wonderfull package management system and a good net install. It's base install is small but it does take a while. Go for sarge or sid. After you have it installed compile a custom kernel with pentuim specified as the chip type and without generic x86 to squeese every bit of efficiency out of it. Use a lightwieght desktop manager... My favorite is XFCE4.

Just remember to

The biggest problem with that old computer is the RAM. Is there any chance you could get some more memory for it? I had an old laptop with a 133Mhz Pentium and 48MB RAM and even it was quite sluggish running a modern full-featured browser (Firefox or Opera) at reasonable speed. Dillo ran well however. I also used a stripped down X-server and a simple window manager (fluxbox). Anyway, my point is that running a GUI in Linux with only 16MB RAM is pretty hard.

That said, I was able to run muLinux with its vintage Netscape "add-on" on such a machine (actually a '486 with 16 Megs of RAM) all "cloned" to a 50mb hard drive. muLinux is an amazingly stripped down, yet functional mini-distro that is showing it's age these days, but it is at: http://sunsite.dk/mulinux if you are interested.

If you can deal without having a GUI interface, the machine will be a lot less memory starved. I'm not sure if that video card is Vesa 2.0 compatible or not, but if it is you can enable the Linux framebuffer access to it and run various programs to view graphics in it without a GUI. For example for Web browsing, you can use the graphics framebuffer enable version of "links" for a web browser like "blueflops" (http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/) uses.

I do like the Debian suggestion if you have limited hard drive space too. With Debian you can install a stable system that contains only the stuff you want, yet easily have everything still work. Slackware (and it's derivatives, like Amigo, Vector, is good, but it is hard to strip things out of it (or add new stuff in) without fighting dependency problems.

Of course the best idea is to try out all the suggestions and decide for yourself what will works best for you.