installation related questions for an OLD pc

[yoshi314]

hello everyone. i'm totally novice to debian, but i'm hoping to get along with it alongside with [oh-so-propably-hated-by-you-guys ] gentoo

first i'm planning to install debian 3.0-r4 on an OLD machine, specifically

pentium 120mhz
32mb edo ram
850mb hdd
CDRW+DVD drive
macronix mx86251 voodorush card
3dfx card
sb awe 32 [isa slot]

my question is - will it install? isn't that hardware too old for this? (ubuntu installer refuses to work with so little ram, for instance)

i'm planning to use fluxbox (with ROX perhaps) on it with some simple mp3 player, text program [abiword - like perhaps], simple graphics browser. and that's about it.

the problem is that I don't know if XFree can handle it memory-wise. and i do not know if it will work with so little memory?

maybe i should try some older distros? (i mean, older version of something, like redhat 5.2 ?)

[Jeroen]

Even sarge should work fine with 32MB ram -- it's just that gnome & openoffice and the like will be quite slow then, but if you don't use that, it should work fine. The sarge installer is made to work with 32MB ram in any case.

[yoshi314]

thanks for reply

well actually i was afraid of glibc, kernel and xfree memory usage. i don't know if i do not have to go back to some older versions of those, to reduce it.

[Grommet - Space Cadet]

Xfree memory shouldnt be so much of a problem but be aware that if you install Gnome & KDE libraries that these will load into memory and may cause you a problem....

I perosnally have Gnome & KDE loaded and run via XFCE on my slower boxes....i tend not to run much other than the basic editors required for the server's use....ie nano, midnight commander.....the only reason i have X running is for a browser.....i suppose Koffice should run OK its pretty small footprint compared to OOo but dont expect it to fly.

As far as installing....should work np from the netinstall work out which kernel you need....linux26 at boot ???

[Guest]

thanks for replies, you restore my faith in debian community

well i don't care too much about kernel anyway. 2.4 is fine, since this box does not contain any new technology

and i've got 3.0-r4 DVD so i don't have to do net-install. besides that old box is not connected to the net, at least for now. (i'm having problems with booting off dvd, since bios cannot see that dvd drive at boot time, i'll try a floppy boot)

gnome and kde...well i'm not even taking them under consideration

how much memory does Xfree actually use? does it increase with version?

[Guest]

Technically it should fit in under 24mb ram........reality is ive never looked at a raw build so i cant confirm