Elric of Grans
04-24-2003, 06:29 AM
G'Day,
For the past few months, I have been pondering going out and finding a really old laptop (how old? Old as I can find; an uncle of mine has a Commodore `laptop' - I'm not after anything quite that obscure though), and installing GNU/Linux on it (so it actually works, and well!).
Firstly, how far down should I dare go? I know if I get something old, I'll need to do some real hacking to get it working (that's the whole reason), but I don't want to end up out of my depth. How should I work out what would be mid-ranged? (ie brand new IBM is easy, DEC is very hard, so somewhere in between). I'm thinking perhaps something older than a 486 (as a kid, I always wanted to upgrade to a 286 ;) ), but I'm definitely open to suggestions. I do not intend to do any upgrades to the hardware, however if it is something I should consider, I am again open to suggestions.
Secondly, how would I actually go about setting it up? I am sure getting the latest CDs and trying to stick them into a system is not about to work (ignoring the fact it'd not have a CD-R). I would *imagine* I would have to modify files (eg kernel, busybox, etc) on this PC, then transfer them across or something - using a floppy-based Distro (eg muLinux) to prepare the system beforehand. Am I on the right track, or am I way off?
Finally, I am sure there's been a million of these done before, and at least half the people who have done this would have web pages: are there any good ones you've seen that you could recommend (and may be of some assistance to me? Running Linux on an X-Box is not quite the page I'm after).
Thanks!
For the past few months, I have been pondering going out and finding a really old laptop (how old? Old as I can find; an uncle of mine has a Commodore `laptop' - I'm not after anything quite that obscure though), and installing GNU/Linux on it (so it actually works, and well!).
Firstly, how far down should I dare go? I know if I get something old, I'll need to do some real hacking to get it working (that's the whole reason), but I don't want to end up out of my depth. How should I work out what would be mid-ranged? (ie brand new IBM is easy, DEC is very hard, so somewhere in between). I'm thinking perhaps something older than a 486 (as a kid, I always wanted to upgrade to a 286 ;) ), but I'm definitely open to suggestions. I do not intend to do any upgrades to the hardware, however if it is something I should consider, I am again open to suggestions.
Secondly, how would I actually go about setting it up? I am sure getting the latest CDs and trying to stick them into a system is not about to work (ignoring the fact it'd not have a CD-R). I would *imagine* I would have to modify files (eg kernel, busybox, etc) on this PC, then transfer them across or something - using a floppy-based Distro (eg muLinux) to prepare the system beforehand. Am I on the right track, or am I way off?
Finally, I am sure there's been a million of these done before, and at least half the people who have done this would have web pages: are there any good ones you've seen that you could recommend (and may be of some assistance to me? Running Linux on an X-Box is not quite the page I'm after).
Thanks!