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Old laptops need Linux - but what flavor?

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simontag:
(2) Problems

(1)
I have 5 Hitachi M-120D laptops. 133mhz - 32mb - 1gb - 12in dual scan screen - non-hot swap floppy/cdrom - I could not hope that someone on this forum would have that laptop and installed linux but, what flavor and version of linux do you think would work well on these specs.

(2)
I have tried to boot off of Debain and Slack CD's with failure on both. It will however boot off of many CD's that I do have (no Linux)so it is not a physical issue. Also the machine does (BIOS) support it and is not simply a fluke. I don't know why Debian won't boot. :mad:

I have been surfing many pages and this one: http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/
It has many many distros but I have yet to decide what would work well, I also don't want to DL and install something that would be too far from mainstream versions (I am installing it to learn Linux better) And have decided that my main version of Linux used on my home machines will be Debian.

Thanks

bedouin:
Tried BSD instead of Linux?

simontag:
I have not. I am trying to learn Linux well enough to move my 18 computers all to it. Not to mention the fact that over 1/2 of them are crappy enough to only run Windows 95/98.

I don't know how different BSD is and did not want to jump into it if I will need to learn 2 different OS's. Don't know if the commands are different. I know many of the core commands are not becuase I work on Mac's. But, I just don't know the pitfalls of running it and trying to learn Linux at the same time.

The laptop will go everywhere with me and I will use it as my mobile training tool.


ST

mobrien_12:
Do they not boot at all or just freeze up?

If it's the latter, perhaps these laptops do not have DMA support.  Can you try supplying the nodma option to the installer?  I had to do that to get Knoppix working on an laptop CDROM drive.

WMD:

--- Quote ---I have 5 Hitachi M-120D laptops. 133mhz - 32mb - 1gb - 12in dual scan screen - non-hot swap floppy/cdrom
--- End quote ---

Windows 95.  No, really.


Check the CDs that you have that will boot.  Are they less than 650MB?  Some old drives may only support 74 minute CDs.  If this is the case, Debian might actually boot...oh yeah.  Slackware wouldn't though - you could try finding an ISO of Slackware 8.1. which is smaller.
On to the other possibility - you aren't burning the CDs properly.  The original bootable CDs were 2.88MB boot images, not your typical ISO.  Not sure how you could fix all that - and you can't swap the floppy/cd-rom...

I'm stuck.

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