Where to find an old version of linux?

[Zxian]

Hey everyone,

I've got a new little toy that I bought for $1 (CAD, that's about 80 cents for all you Americans ). It's an age-old IBM ThinkPad. System specs are:

Pentium 166MHz
40MB Ram
2GB HD
External floppy drive (I know... wierd, eh?).
PCMCIA connected 4x CD-ROM drive
1MB Crap name video card (just for the hell of it)

The greatest thing about it is the fact that it still has the sticker on the bottom saying "Designed for Windows95"!!!

Right now the thing has Win98 on it with Office 97. I'd like to see if I can find an old distro of Linux to install on there. Basically, it's going to turn into a word processor for my girlfriend during her 5 hour breaks between classes (using OpenOffice or the like).

Does anyone have any recommendations as to what I should install on it? I've heard that for lower end systems (like this one), Linux is a bit better in terms of speed.

I think I might be able to get my hands on a copy of RedHat 5.0 from one of my old profs, and I think that it would install on the laptop, but I'm not sure.

There's no ethernet port on it, and it wouldn't be used for anything internet at all. Just typing and maybe basic spreadsheet stuff. That's it. The only catch is that it has to be able to transfer the documents to floppy and then be able to print them from a WinXP desktop.

Thanks for any suggestions. This'll be a fun project (muahahah...)

P.S. Please bear with me since this will be my first time dealing with installing Linux. I've used a RedHat based computer, but just for typing code and browsing a couple of websites.

[ByteBack]

Their are many small distro of Linux. Check out Linux.org. There you should be able to find something for downloading.

As for which???? your spec's are pretty low. But you shouldn't have any troubles running stuff like "Damn Small Linux" and "Peanut Linux". Both can be run live from CD or installed.

[braindead]

With a basic Linux install all you'll need is Open Office or Star Office for word or excel type of work and both can be opened in word or excel.
another great Linux forum, http://www.linuxforum.org

[FenderGtrsRock]

Hello there sir,

ah those IBM thinkpads where real troopers back in their day!

If your looking for older linux distros or just small ones, my favorite site for linux distros old and new. if you scroll down on a particular distributions page you can find many of their older verions for download as well.

Hope it helps

Peace, Love, Empathy.
Robert

[TiSwAs]

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/

U'll find the whole Redhat colection there.

[Sgood1971]

I am running Damn Small Linux on a machine with almost half those specs and it is amazing. Nice tight distro with full GUI using flux as the WM and it is only 50MB. Another really nice distro for older systems is Zipslack but it is harder to install. I know this is a little late, but I just joined the forum today.

[FenderGtrsRock]

damn small linux is damn nice, i have a version of it on a 266 Pentuim with 48mb of ram and it runs quite nicely

[Zxian]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going to give DSL whenever I can figure out how to read all the instructions on getting the computer to boot from the CD-ROM (PCMCIA connected, no less).

Thanks again.