linux (or not) on ancient CPUs

may saint iGNUcius have mercy on your soul...

a word of warning: this page, and the pages for older machines in general, will make assumptions that you are a more technical person than the windows 10 to linux guide. actually, this one in particular will be pretty difficult, no matter how you slice it. it is also currently pretty brief, and i need to give more detailed instructions in a future update. for now, it is probably only useful to moderately skilled linux and unix users.

table of contents


introduction

at this point, we're getting to the very bleeding edge of what is still possible. if you're using less than 512 megabytes of RAM and/or a pentium III or older CPU, you should be informed that what you will be doing is less like a "normal desktop computing experience", and more like "digging in your heels to spite planned obsolescence". the vast majority of modern programs will not even start on your computer, and you will have to make extensive use of the software megathread to get any work done whatsoever. every new task you must learn to do will be a small adventure, and will probably involve much trial and error. you should probably be quite familiar with the linux/unix command line before attempting to seriously daily drive such an old system. it will most likely be quite "fun". no normal computing experience should ever be "fun".

you have been... warned? honestly, if you're the kind of person to be here in the first place, this is probably just encouraging you.


which distro should i use?

again, that depends on how fast your computer is... well, rather, how slow it is, because all of these computers are slow as hell. here are several options! i'll give a short description of each of them, my personal minimum/recommended hardware requirements for each of them based on my own trial and error, and then link you to the section below where you can try to install them.


porteus linux: this is an old legend in the "lightning fast linux" space. on a modern system, it boots from cold off to the desktop in 15 seconds or less. it claims to maintain compatibility with the original pentium (i586, equals AMD K5) feature set, but i haven't tested it on anything older than a pentium III (i686, equals AMD K6), since that's the oldest CPU i have ever owned. considering how lightweight it is, it is shockingly easy to install, and the LXQT and LXDE versions are fairly complete desktop experiences by default.

it is what's called a "RAMdisk" system, though, as is typical of ultralight, fast-booting linux distributions, and this means it has some weird quirks when it comes to "saving the session" when you power down. if you don't save your session properly, you can lose all the changes you made on that boot. figuring out how to do this properly is unintuitive, and i don't have good tips for it, because i haven't used porteus very much. maybe i'll come back to this at a later date, after doing more testing, and make a "porteus tips" page? in the meantime, porteus has a forum that you can check for help: https://forum.porteus.org/viewforum.php?f=81. oh yeah, and the root password is "toor" - you'll need to enter it a couple times to authenticate when installing, and it doesn't explain this anywhere!

it has a lot of variants, but for a system with 256 MB, i recommend the LXQT or LXDE desktop. LXDE is slightly lighter and faster than LXQT, while LXQT is more modern and better maintained. if your system has less than 256 MB of RAM, you should use openbox, which is even lighter. even then, though, i have not had time to test porteus openbox yet on 192 MB of RAM - maybe scroll to the next option if you have this much RAM or less.


here are my recommended hardware specifications for porteus:

if this sounds like your computer, you can download porteus here. go through the list of mirrors there until you find one that works (and doesn't take hours to download anything), and go to i586/current/ and then click the link to your edition of choice.


puppy linux: this is the most common recommendation for "lightweight linux". in my experience, it's not much lighter than porteus, and is also less customizable, shipping a (frankly pretty ugly) window manager config by default in the lightest configurations. the lightest version of puppy linux in my testing is SlackPup32. if you have 192 MB of RAM, it's more likely to be usable than porteus, but will probably still be pretty slow, and will also be a lot clunkier.

it's also a "RAMdisk" system, much like porteus, meaning you have to save the session every time you shut down, or you'll lose all the changes you made while the computer was running. this is slightly easier and more intuitive on puppy linux than on porteus, but can still be frustrating sometimes.


here are the recommended hardware specifications for slackpup32 based on my own testing. other puppy linux variants have higher requirements, and are generally both slower than porteus and a worse experience.

...honestly, in my experience, there's very little reason to use puppy instead of porteus. if you'd prefer to use puppy, though, you can download slackpup32 here. you're looking for the newest .iso file to download.


netBSD/openBSD: not linux, but another, smaller, weirder thing. actually, two things. netBSD is focused on portability - it's available for a wide variety of CPU architectures - whereas openBSD is focused on security. both are lighter than any modern linux distro (except maybe the one below).

openBSD generally has better software compatibility than netBSD, and netBSD will generally have better hardware support (except for some very old wifi cards, where openBSD supports them and netBSD does not). netBSD is nominally much lighter than openBSD, but if you're installing a modern desktop environment, they'll both feel about the same. honestly, they are about comparable on my hardware - you should probably try openBSD first, and if you have driver issues or performance issues, try netBSD.


here are the recommended hardware requirements for openBSD:

if this sounds like your computer, you can download openBSD here. you most likely want to click on install79.iso > i386. there may be a newer openBSD version available at https://www.openbsd.org/, in the sidebar under "Getting OpenBSD/Download". regardless of version, you want the .iso file including the file sets [not the CD version, probably not even if you're actually using a CD]. there is also a boot floppy option, for computers that can only boot from a 1.44 megabyte, 3.5 inch floppy drive.

setting up openBSD for modern desktop use is a process. i need to write a specific openBSD tutorial at a later date, which goes through how to set up the system, what packages to install, and how to configure them to get a full desktop experience. for now, there is documentation on how to use openBSD online.


here are the recommended hardware requirements for netBSD:

if this sounds like your computer (and it probably does), you can download netBSD right from the front page of the website. you probably want to go to i386, and then DVD or CD. if your computer can only boot from 1.44 megabyte floppy, there's an option to install netBSD in this way... with 7 floppies, which you'll have to write to blank disks from .img files. click on i386, go to "...via download", then to installation/floppy/. i think you want boot1.img through boot7.img, and you don't need boot-com1.img through boot-com7.img, but i haven't tested this boot option (and probably, little to no one else has in the last 10-15 years). you'll have to figure it out yourself, i'm afraid. have fun!

setting up netBSD for modern desktop use is a process. i need to write a specific netBSD tutorial at a later date, which goes through how to set up the system, what packages to install, and how to configure them to get a full desktop experience. for now, there is documentation on how to use netBSD online.

tiny core linux

flying in from left field is another, much shittier linux!

tinycore is famous for being the lightest modern (-ish) linux available. it doesn't have very clear hardware requirements, but it'll probably run on most x86 systems that netBSD will. because it's linux, it also has better driver support, so hardware that doesn't work on netBSD (i.e. no wifi) will probably work on tinycore. there's one, small problem with this: it is very annoying to use.

for one thing, it's ugly and clunky, and looks more at home in the late 1990s than the modern day. to make matters worse, it really isn't very customizable, so you can't even theme it to look better. for another thing, it is a RAMdisk instead of a normal disk install like netBSD or openBSD, making it a bit of a hassle to use in comparison. and for a third thing, you are stuck on old versions of packages, sometimes many years old, since ports of packages to tinycore linux are pretty much done on a "whenever a developer feels like it" basis. overall, it is a very noticeably worse experience than any of the other options above, and is still a fair bit heavier than netBSD's default install, despite all the compromises it makes!

if you want to try tinycore, its website is here. if you plan to use a wired network connection and a US keyboard layout, you should download TinyCore, and if you plan to use a wireless network or any non-US keyboard layout, you should download CorePlus. it can boot from USB, DVD, or CD, but not floppy.

niche OS lightning round

here is a list of other niche operating systems that still support pentium III-class processors or older. i won't spend much time on them, because their hardware support will likely be worse than the BSDs, which are already pretty hit or miss.