[ILUG] Linux for a 386?

[Rick Moen]

begin Darragh Rogan quotation:

> I inherited an OLD 386 recently, and want to install Linux of some
> form on it. I was thinking of setting up smoothwall on it, but it
> tells me 0x10 or 0x40 error when I boot from the smoothwall floppy....

You didn't specify:  At what point in the boot process?  Did you try
three or four other floppies, in case the first one was physically bad?
Did you try substituting a different floppy drive borrowed from
elsewhere, just to see if the one in the 386 was marginal?

Floppy media quality is a serious problem, and any floppy drive still
living in a discarded 386 is likewise suspect of being dodgy at best.

> What would be a good all round distrib for the 386 i.e.: an install
> floppy, and a cdrom iso?

You didn't specify:  How big a hard drive(s)?  How much RAM?  What role
do you want the machine to do?

Personally, I wouldn't even try:  http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#386

(See also:  http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#486 )

-- 
Cheers,     Microsoft Corporation Gandhi-o-meter, revision 2001-05-3 beta01.
Rick Moen  "They ignore you." "They laugh at you." "They fight you." "You win."
rick at linuxmafia.com                       WE ARE HERE.>> ^^^^^^^^^^