"Carlos E. R." <robin1.listas@tiscali.es> writes:

The 02.12.16 at 02:43, Mark Gray wrote:

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What do you think, could it be possible to install suse 6.1 on that machine? Should I try an older version? I think I have 5.2 somewhere. Or should I try another type of distro?

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I use 'monkey' Linux on my 386SX-16 -- it is a 2.0.30 kernel, slackware derived UMSDOS based system. Both SuSE and Redhat use way too many bash scripts, which are excruciatingly slow on a 386SX-16.

Yes, booting the install is slow. I though of suse 6.1 because I have it available. I had 5.2, but I can not find it. I must have something else on those heaps of magazine's cds I have collecting dust.

Wait until you get it installed and see how slow it is running all the SysV style init scripts to boot and shutdown :-) Once you have it booted up though (a half hour or so?) it should not be too bad.

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How much ram does it have?

Just 5 Mb. It is old and slow by present day standards, but it served me well from 1991 till 1995 or later. A 386SX, 20Mhz, with coprocessor added much later.

The coprocessor is going to help things quite a bit -- my 386sx16 does not have one. If you just want to have a Unix on the machine, you also might look into Minix -- it is really quite zippy on a 386sx compared to Linux, especially with only 5Mb -- I have 10Mb, but 8Mb is on an ISA card which is three times slower than the 2Mb on the motherboard.