got me a free lappy

weeder

ok i got a free laptop bog standard
pentium 1
4MB ram
40GB hdd
dlink wireless nic
windows 95

all ill be using this for is firefox and msn NOTHING else what Os would do best
win 95 or a basic linux distro??????????? ive ran win98 fairly well with a desktop of this spec before so thats an option too what should i do?????

TerrorFirmer

Are you sure thats right?

It'd be super unusual to get a laptop with 4mb ram and a 40gig drive...did you mean 40mb ram and 4gb drive?

Win98 will not run well on 4mb ram at all....

weeder

no the hdd was 500Mb but ive got my own 40Gb one

TerrorFirmer

If you intend running anything at all beyond windows 3.1, you'll need more ram then that...

weeder

it runs 95 just fine

Khannie

Yeah, win95 was designed for 4-8MB of ram (at a minimum). I'd recommend getting netscape 3 "gold" tbh. It was a gem of a browser and ran with a very small memory sig iirc.

One thing you'll need to do is to have a decent sized fixed swap file that is not segmented (there are swap file defrag tools). That should help you a bit.

weeder

well i wont hve it till during the week so ill see then......me think linux is best option still

weeder

tbh i dont caare what it runs really as long as i can get on the net wirelessley and use a brwser and an msn client

zap

you won't b doing wireless with that. if you use win 95 there won't b any drivers for the wireless dongle.

zuma

That thing has way too little ram!!!

With 4MB or RAM your computer will have to access the HDD swap file for absolutely everything and if you think your going to get even 1Mb broadband at full speed on that then think again!!!

For example I've an old AMDK6-2 500MHz hanging around here and when testing my connection on it the other day I got around 1/3rd of my normal 2Mb speed!

the_syco

The "4MB RAM" thing sounds like inbuilt video memory, tbh.

If you have 32MB of RAM, or so, check out Win2000. I've found that Windows 2000 ran better on my laptop than Win98. Its a 233MHz, 4MB video ram, 32MB RAM.

Also, check out shop4memory. Using the "memory configurator", it can get your memory type for your laptop. It found my laptop memory (the laptop is about 8 or 9 years old).

jor el

If you're going the Linux route, then one of the old distros might work well. A laptop that old though most likely doesn't have USB ports, so wireless net access is out (unless you can get a PCMCIA wireless adapter?).

I don't think Win98 will work too well on 4MB RAM, again though no USB =

Win 95 has only really really really bad USB support (practically none) so that's really out too.

I think your question shouldn't be which OS, 'but should I even bother'.

maidhc

Forget Linux on that machine unless you are going to use the console and no GUI.

Windows 95 (the original, not version a) is your best bet. It worked very well for me on my 486 thinkpad until last year. The thinkpad had 12mbs of RAM though.

Firefox needs a fair computer to run. Internet Exploder 4/5 might be a sensible option. IE 4 ran fine on the thinkpad, but i'm not sure if using it was a particulaly fun experience.

weeder

jor el wrote:

If you're going the Linux route, then one of the old distros might work well. A laptop that old though most likely doesn't have USB ports, so wireless net access is out (unless you can get a PCMCIA wireless adapter?).

I don't think Win98 will work too well on 4MB RAM, again though no USB =

Win 95 has only really really really bad USB support (practically none) so that's really out too.

I think your question shouldn't be which OS, 'but should I even bother'.

got a pcmcia wireless
would use ethr net only i got no card

jor el

In that case, I'd get my Win 98 (2nd edition) CD and apply 98lite to it to remove a lot of the crud and rubbish that MS put in. This may then work on 4MB RAM. Failing that, I'd go for Win 95 and use one of the old Netscapes or IE3 (definitely not IE4 which is the worst piece of software ever written in the history of the universe).

It all depends on driver support for the wireless card in the end. Whatever it will work with. You could still get RedHat 6 or Mandrake 6 to work well with 4MB RAM and have XF86 V3 running aswell. Again, supporting the wireless card is your key.

Good luck anyway, let us know if it works.

Mac daddy

weeder wrote:

got a pcmcia wireless
would use ethr net only i got no card

Good luck trying to the pcmcia card to work under windows 95 -

Have you checked for drivers?

blorg

You might consider trying Opera rather than Firefox, I think it runs better on very low-spec computers and has a lower memory footprint.

weeder

actually this is the same as the spec of my first pc...i ran 98 on it withouth 98lite

Trojan

http://www.selenic.com/tiny-about/
http://peeweelinux.com/#whatis
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Loads of distros at:
http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Mini_Distributions/

weeder

Trojan wrote:

http://www.selenic.com/tiny-about/

this looks veery promising but erm will it support wireless....also might have some ram located

Ri_Nollaig

was i the only one who thought the title was referring to a free lap dance?

Cabaal

Khannie wrote:

Yeah, win95 was designed for 4-8MB of ram (at a minimum). I'd recommend getting netscape 3 "gold" tbh. It was a gem of a browser and ran with a very small memory sig iirc.

Agreed, the latest Firefox and MSN will kill this machine no bother at all
I hate they way applications are so bloated these days