linux on a laptop ( less than 4 megs RAM)

[optech]

i'm trying to put a linux distro on my laptop with less than 4 megs of memory...
but i don't want to do a floppy boot everytime...
if i get it working, i'll write an NHF for it, but for now, i need to know where to start...
should i try and create my own distro from scratch? or should i use another already available distro?

in the latter case, it has to run in under 4 megs of RAM... i was looking at FREESCO, but it needs 6 megs, and i was thinking of using SmallLINUX, but i don't want to boot off the floppy everytime...

oh, what should i do???

[Shadoglare]

I've got debian running off a 120MB hard drive on a 4MB 486/25... installed it from floppies on their FTP site.
Let me know if you need any more info on it :)

[FoBoT]

check this (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=12&t=000420)

good luck! :)

[ph34r]

How much less than 4mb? I think that 4 is the absolute minimum required by linux, although the laptop I torture counted 3.75mb on boot... Check that link that FoBoT posted, its to how I did it on my system.

[mypython8]

I'll be trying to do the same on an 8mb laptop pretty soon(when I find the time) :rolleyes: But I'm not a linux genius yet, so I'm not really sure how I'm going to go about it. But hopefully I can find some help around here. :D If you figure it out, please post and let us know. Also check out how ph34r did it. It looks pretty helpfull.

[optech]

i'm going to try and get freesco running... but when i boot from the floppy i get an error:

out of memoryVFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).

this is just after it finds the compressed kernel image i believe...

i'm thinking i have to enable my swap partition before installing., but i'm not sure how to do this, as FREESCO isn't accepting the swap-on command when i try and boot it...

i know that you can get freesco working in less than 4 megs, but dammit!!