How-to install Debian 5 with X on old notebook

[stioann]

Hy all,

I have an old Notebook (Toshiba Tecra 550CDT) with 32mb of RAM, S3 Virge/MX 4Mb Video, 4Gb HDD and 266MMX PI, how can I install Debian 5 on such an old one book?
From tones of readed forums I make a conclusion to install Xfree with Xvesa or Xtrio server, but there is a small problem: i'm russian and I need there to be a russian localization and language in Xserver. So I returned to reading forums and find that I can install Xvesa or Xtrio on Xorg with minimal memory usage (Xfree with Xvesa uses 2-4mb ram, and Xorg with Xvesa 9-12mb ram). Is it so?

I need there to be a Nginx serv with apache, php and mysql; ssh; dyndns demon for virtual hosting; and X window manager to develop right on that machine, not to work on my home PC and then upload all data to serv. So can I go it work on 266Mhz MMX with 32mb ram with X, or it's better to install all this without X window manager? Or is there any other way to solv my needs?

Thank you all.

[edbarx]

I have an old Notebook (Toshiba Tecra 550CDT) with 32mb of RAM, S3 Virge/MX 4Mb Video, 4Gb HDD and 266MMX PI, how can I install Debian 5 on such an old one book?

I am of the opinion that your notebook is too old to support Lenny with X running. I remember a Pentium 1 system with 98 Mega Bytes of RAM, was slow even with Debian Etch.

[julian67]

Hy all,

I have an old Notebook (Toshiba Tecra 550CDT) with 32mb of RAM, S3 Virge/MX 4Mb Video, 4Gb HDD and 266MMX PI, how can I install Debian 5 on such an old one book?
From tones of readed forums I make a conclusion to install Xfree with Xvesa or Xtrio server, but there is a small problem: i'm russian and I need there to be a russian localization and language in Xserver. So I returned to reading forums and find that I can install Xvesa or Xtrio on Xorg with minimal memory usage (Xfree with Xvesa uses 2-4mb ram, and Xorg with Xvesa 9-12mb ram). Is it so?

I need there to be a Nginx serv with apache, php and mysql; ssh; dyndns demon for virtual hosting; and X window manager to develop right on that machine, not to work on my home PC and then upload all data to serv. So can I go it work on 266Mhz MMX with 32mb ram with X, or it's better to install all this without X window manager? Or is there any other way to solv my needs?

Thank you all.

What you want to do is not impossible but it will not be satisfying either. You will definitely have a difficult time running X on such hardware. A system carefully built with command line and ncurses applications might be tolerable. Personally I would look at some of the distributions which use a 2.4 series kernel and are specifically intended for such old hardware. Examples would be DSL and Deli.

Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements

Depending on your needs, you might manage with less than some of the recommended hardware listed in the table below. However, most users risk being frustrated if they ignore these suggestions.

A Pentium 4, 1GHz system is the minimum recommended for a desktop system.

Table 3.2. Recommended Minimum System Requirements
Install Type RAM (minimal) RAM (recommended) Hard Drive
No desktop 64 megabytes 256 megabytes 1 gigabyte
With Desktop 64 megabytes 512 megabytes 5 gigabytes

The actual minimum memory requirements are a lot less then the numbers listed in this table. Depending on the architecture, it is possible to install Debian with as little as 20MB (for s390) to 48MB (for i386 and amd64). The same goes for the disk space requirements, especially if you pick and choose which applications to install; see Section D.2, “Disk Space Needed for Tasks” for additional information on disk space requirements.

It is possible to run a graphical desktop environment on older or low-end systems, but in that case it is recommended to install a window manager that is less resource-hungry than those of the GNOME or KDE desktop environments; alternatives include xfce4, icewm and wmaker, but there are others to choose from.

[stioann]

I am of the opinion that your notebook is too old to support Lenny with X running. I remember a Pentium 1 system with 98 Mega Bytes of RAM, was slow even with Debian Etch.

Opposite, Debian Etch start well on my notebook, but there is a little problem there, I don't have a PCMCIA lan card, and no place here there to buy it. But I have a USB-Ethernet LAN-card, and it's drivers needed to be compiled under 2.6.xx kernel. I can't compile that kernel, because I don't have an i-net on that notebook. So, I think, easiest way to install Debian Lenny from net install distrib, and then download and compile all what I need. First of all, offcouse, after installing Debian Lenny net i'll made a backup of all HDD with acronis or ghost. And all my successful steps I'll backup in incremental archive. I'm persistent.

[pcalvert]

You may find some useful tips in this post:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=155520#p155520

Phil