21 ms·

I'm wondering what the best software for this would be given a 133 mhz cpu and 72 mb of RAM. Do you try to trim down a modern linux distro, or do you use an OS

by Joeri 11y ago

I'm wondering what the best software for this would be given a 133 mhz cpu and 72 mb of RAM. Do you try to trim down a modern linux distro, or do you use an OS of a similar vintage? No possibility of getting a modern browsing experience on those specs, so probably the vintage OS offers the best experience.

cturner 11y ago
Plan 9 would run well. Netbsd would be solid, particularly if you don't care about X. Openstep if you could find a CD. Minix. That's an amazing amount of RAM for that era, and OS/2 4.0 would probably run well on it, with no need to hunt for graphics drivers. Get Turbo C or Turbo Pascal for DOS, Word for windows, solid multitasking. BeOS/intel won't run - that needed pentium arch or above. BeOS would fly on an old pentium thinkpad with that much RAM though. Network stack is patchy, but the media API remains impressive.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
There's no way youre using a modern linux distro here. Even something like puppylinux which is designed for "old" computers expects around 256mb of ram. 72mb of ram doesn't get you much nowadays. Maybe you can install Damn Small Linux and get some basic functionality. Someone on /r/sysadmin tried reviving an old 486 laptop recently and I believe he could only get DSL to work, but had significant driver problems. I think he had much less ram, like 16mb or so. 72mb of ram probably get away with NT 4.0 easily and maybe even Windows 2000 or even XP, though I'm not sure how usable XP would be even if it did boot. edit: I found someone running puppy on 64meg of ram. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6RmiXoSZaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6RmiXoSZaI
- gtk40 11y ago
  I've run Puppy on <128mb of RAM, although not recently. You probably would have to use Dillo or Links as a web browser instead of a Mozilla based browser.
- xhrpost 11y ago
  If you ditch the GUI you can go pretty low. VPS advocates used to see it as a challenge to reduce RAM usage. Here's one going down to 4mb https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/309202/#Comment_309202 https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/309202/#Commen...
- antongribok 11y ago
  Man I used to play a lot with Puppy and DSL, brings back some fond memories. Just for fun, I spun up an Ubuntu Trusty VM in VirtualBox with 64 MB of RAM and it works just fine (after uninstalling Puppet and Chef). $ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 47 44 3 0 1 9 -/+ buffers/cache: 32 15 Swap: 0 0 0 $
- yuhong 11y ago
  XP won't boot at all.
- antod 11y ago
  > 72mb of ram probably get away with NT 4.0 easily Very easily - we used to have lots of 32MB NT4 machines. I think the system requirements were only 12 or 16MB (as usual wishful thinking really). Although I think the eventual resource usage of SP6 was a lot higher than the RTM version. > and maybe even Windows 2000 I tried Win2K Pro on a 486DX2 66 with 64MB once - it worked but was very very slow. I suspect the cpu and disk were a bigger factor than the amount of ram.
jandrese 11y ago
72MB isn't terribly small. You can even run X on that (assuming it supports the graphics) and one of the old school window managers. Modern web browsers tend to be massive memory hogs so they might cause problems, but just starting X won't break the bank. The 133Mhz CPU might actually be more of a problem, especially for stuff like Web Browsers that tend to assume that cpu cycles are free. I've run Chrome on a Raspberry Pi, which is clocked almost 8x higher than this laptop and feels sluggish at best. You would probably be better off X-Displaying a browser from somewhere else and using the box mostly for terminals and SSH sessions.
- Zardoz84 11y ago
  I run SuSE Linux 5 with FvWM, Enlightment, KDE 1 and Gnome 1 (and Gnome 1 over KDE!) with less RAM that 72MiB, on a AMD 5x86DX5@133MhZ-PR75 For web browser, elinks could be an lightweight option.

by Joeri 11y ago

cturner 11y ago

Plan 9 would run well. Netbsd would be solid, particularly if you don't care about X. Openstep if you could find a CD. Minix. That's an amazing amount of RAM for that era, and OS/2 4.0 would probably run well on it, with no need to hunt for graphics drivers. Get Turbo C or Turbo Pascal for DOS, Word for windows, solid multitasking. BeOS/intel won't run - that needed pentium arch or above. BeOS would fly on an old pentium thinkpad with that much RAM though. Network stack is patchy, but the media API remains impressive.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

There's no way youre using a modern linux distro here. Even something like puppylinux which is designed for "old" computers expects around 256mb of ram. 72mb of ram doesn't get you much nowadays. Maybe you can install Damn Small Linux and get some basic functionality. Someone on /r/sysadmin tried reviving an old 486 laptop recently and I believe he could only get DSL to work, but had significant driver problems. I think he had much less ram, like 16mb or so. 72mb of ram probably get away with NT 4.0 easily and maybe even Windows 2000 or even XP, though I'm not sure how usable XP would be even if it did boot. edit: I found someone running puppy on 64meg of ram. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6RmiXoSZaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6RmiXoSZaI

gtk40 11y ago
I've run Puppy on <128mb of RAM, although not recently. You probably would have to use Dillo or Links as a web browser instead of a Mozilla based browser.
xhrpost 11y ago
If you ditch the GUI you can go pretty low. VPS advocates used to see it as a challenge to reduce RAM usage. Here's one going down to 4mb https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/309202/#Comment_309202 https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/309202/#Commen...
antongribok 11y ago
Man I used to play a lot with Puppy and DSL, brings back some fond memories. Just for fun, I spun up an Ubuntu Trusty VM in VirtualBox with 64 MB of RAM and it works just fine (after uninstalling Puppet and Chef). $ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 47 44 3 0 1 9 -/+ buffers/cache: 32 15 Swap: 0 0 0 $
yuhong 11y ago
XP won't boot at all.
antod 11y ago
> 72mb of ram probably get away with NT 4.0 easily Very easily - we used to have lots of 32MB NT4 machines. I think the system requirements were only 12 or 16MB (as usual wishful thinking really). Although I think the eventual resource usage of SP6 was a lot higher than the RTM version. > and maybe even Windows 2000 I tried Win2K Pro on a 486DX2 66 with 64MB once - it worked but was very very slow. I suspect the cpu and disk were a bigger factor than the amount of ram.

jandrese 11y ago

72MB isn't terribly small. You can even run X on that (assuming it supports the graphics) and one of the old school window managers. Modern web browsers tend to be massive memory hogs so they might cause problems, but just starting X won't break the bank. The 133Mhz CPU might actually be more of a problem, especially for stuff like Web Browsers that tend to assume that cpu cycles are free. I've run Chrome on a Raspberry Pi, which is clocked almost 8x higher than this laptop and feels sluggish at best. You would probably be better off X-Displaying a browser from somewhere else and using the box mostly for terminals and SSH sessions.

Zardoz84 11y ago
I run SuSE Linux 5 with FvWM, Enlightment, KDE 1 and Gnome 1 (and Gnome 1 over KDE!) with less RAM that 72MiB, on a AMD 5x86DX5@133MhZ-PR75 For web browser, elinks could be an lightweight option.