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While doing some "Spring Cleaning" I found an extremely old laptop gathering dust, so I decided to resurrect it. It surprisingly still works flawlessly, on Windows NT. I tried installing a few different Linux Distros, new and old, but I got all different kinds of errors. Here are the specs: Toshiba Satellite 4030CDT (13.3", C, WinNT, 64 MB RAM, 4.1 GB HDD) Intel Celeron processor, No Ethernet port (forget about Wifi lol) Dialup, No DVD drive, only CD and floppy

Any tips welcome! :-)

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what kind of errors are you getting? – Mitch May 21 '12 at 12:58
I had Ubuntu 8.04 server on my power mac G3 (300Mhz cpu, 408 MB RAM, 80 gb hdd, etc.) I suggest u try an old server version, or just buy a new laptop. I used around 30 mb of RAM on my server. So try something without a GUI. – Alvar May 21 '12 at 13:52
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What do you plan to do with the little beast? – Pitto May 21 '12 at 14:59

closed as not constructive by Jorge Castro, fossfreedom♦ Jun 9 '12 at 8:19

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3 Answers

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You either need to look at really old versions of various distributions. Or you can try something like Damn Small Linux, i.e. current distributions which specialize in running on very limited hardware. For example DSL claims to

Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram

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With only 64 MB of ram, I think it's dead Jim. It seems even Lubuntu doesn't consider this to be enough memory, saying this:

Computers with less than 600 MB of RAM may fall into the class of low-RAM computers. Using the minimal ISO, it's possible to install and run lubuntu-core on a PC with only 64 MB of RAM. We consider 128 MB of RAM the minimal requirements for a usable Lubuntu Desktop system. Even with 128 MB, you will have problems (apparent freezing) running memory hungry applications like the Chromium web browser. In that case, we recommend using the low-memory web browser called xxxterm, which is available from the Universe repository, which is enabled by default.

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You will need to go back very far to find something that requiers only 64 mb of RAM. the 8.04 server requires 128 mb of RAM as a minimum. Which is twice what you have. of course you can go back even further, but why?

  • What do you want to do on the laptop?
  • Why do you want to change from Windows NT if that works?

you will have to go back very far if you are going to find a Ubuntu distro with that little RAM.

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