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Linux distro for an ancient Pentium PC

I need some help finding a distro for a very old machine.

It’s my family’s old desktop with 2001 components (bought in 2004) and a Pentium CPU that is NOT i686. I checked the exact model and architecture once but I don’t remember it now. The only thing I remember is that it’s not i686 so 99% of modern 32 bit distros don’t work on it (stuck right after grub).

The machine has 1 Gb of DDR1 RAM though so I think it may be useful or at least fun to play around with.

Now it’s on Windows XP that runs quite well but doesn’t support modern SSL certificates so it can’t browse the internet (idk how to fix it ok?).

A long time ago I tried to run multiple distros in live mode on it and got only one (Puppy) to work. Display, sound, ethernet and pretty much everything worked fine. GPU seemed to be an issue though because NVidia and I couldn’t install the driver (it was skill issue and I think it’s possible to do). But now it doesn’t work for some reason.

Are there any Linux distros or other operating systems (preferably not deprecated) that I can install on it? And btw it does have bootable USB support.

EDIT: There are way too many answers and a lot of ones that don’t mind the architecture limitations. I’m grateful to everyone who replied but I have to close this discussion now and I will not reply to further answers. I have received enough information and I cannot physically read so many replies.

bloodfart ,

There’s gentoo options for a lot of older architectures. I even got it running on a 32bit power machine.

Back in the day gentoo meant compiling everything from source, but nowadays there’s precompiled binaries.

If you’re doing the evanescence routine on older hardware, check to see if there’s cheap ram and ssds available that work with its interfaces. Usually the trick with pata is to use old cf to sata adapters because cf is pin compatible with the little pata interfaces they’d put on laptops.

Consider cleaning and reapplying thermal paste to the cpu. You won’t even need to take it out of the socket, just don’t dump isopropyl all over the board while cleaning.

If your old computer has a cool old sound card there’s never been a better time to use a tracker that takes advantage of its built in synthesizer!

nyan ,

I agree that Gentoo will probably work, as it still has functional i486 support. Be aware that you may be spending a lot of time compiling if you go that route and don’t have a second, faster machine to use for distcc or the like.

As for the nvidia card, the proprietary driver won’t work for something of that age. Check the supported cards in Nouveau (and maybe even the really old drivers for prehistoric cards). In a pinch, the vesa driver should work. Good luck.

dRLY ,
@dRLY@lemmy.ml avatar

doing the evanescence routine on older hardware

That was one of the best deep-cut comments I have read in a while! The helpful advise to OP was also nice. lol

Frederic ,

At least if you want to play with it in XP, install mypal browser www.mypal-browser.org I have had success with it on a XP machine, it loads facebook, reddit, lemmy.world, etc.

For an old distro, have you tried AntiX 32 bits?

fuzzy_feeling ,

antix never let me down…
looks like they have an i386 iso.
ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mxlinux/…/antiX-23.1/

LeFantome ,

Antix 23.1 is based on Debian bookworm, so I think it requires i686 now. Older Antix releases ( based on Bullseye or earlier ) should work.

fuzzy_feeling ,

haven’t testet, but looks like there are bookworm i386 isos.
cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/…/iso-cd/

LeFantome ,

They are really i686 though ( from Bookworm on ).

LeFantome ,

On Debian, i386 is now i686.

www.debian.org/releases/…/ch-information.en.html#…

hagar ,

Consider antiX. It’s very lightweight, supports 32 bit and you’ll have access to the Debian Repos.

ipacialsection ,
@ipacialsection@startrek.website avatar

Damn Small Linux is a recently resurrected distro made specifically to run on old 32-bit PCs. You probably won’t be doing much web browsing or gaming on this device, but you should at least be able to get it to function

cyborganism ,

Technically, Ubuntu supports it’s LTS versions for something like 12 years I think?

Anyway, you can get Ubuntu 14.04 LTS still with the i386 32bit ISO.

www.releases.ubuntu.com/14.04/

I personally would install that and install something like FVWM95 or Blackbox WM or some other ancien desktop environment.

turbowafflz ,

Perhaps openbsd or netbsd? They’re probably less likely to drop hardware support for your device in the near future than any linux distribution

Freebsd is also an option but you would have to compile it yourself as the prebuilt binaries are currently 686 despite it having support back to 486

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

BSD is an option but I heard it’s slower and idk anything about how it works and how to install it

turbowafflz ,

I’ve never noticed BSDs being much slower, and if you’re already used to minimal linux distros like arch it’s not that hard to set them up unless you like need linux-only software.

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

I meant slower in terms of any rendering (web, 3D or anything else). And I’m only used to graphical DEs. I installed Arch via archinstall a few times and had a minimal Debian server with nothing except ssh working but that’s about it

turbowafflz ,

You definitely can install a graphical desktop on whichever BSD, you’ll just have to follow instructions online somewhere instead of running a premade script.

If you want something really easy to use graphically right out of the box there’s also Haiku, it’s a completely independent OS that’s sort of an open source clone of BeOS but a lot more unixy than BeOS was. It’s really lightweight and has maybe my favorite desktop GUI out of every operating system I’ve used. The only real downside to it is that there isn’t an amazing web browser for it yet, the built in WebPositive is a little lacking in support for modern sites and GNOME Web, which you can install from HaikuDepot was a little unstable last time I tried it. If you don’t need to use the web a ton though (which is probably the more pleasant option on your particular system regardless of browser), it’s really nice.

hagar ,

Your mileage may vary for performance. It really depends what OS and what hardware. In my experience saying all BSDs are slower at rendering would be too broad a statement.

If you’ve done Arch and Debian server installs, you’ll be fine installing a major BSD. Just answer prompts and you are done, particularly if you are using the default disk partitioning scheme. Consider NetBSD. It’s known for its wide hardware compatibility. X is pre-installed, just “startx”.

Pacmanlives ,

Not sure where you have heard they are slower. Most of my experience has they are faster but I will say BSD kind of sucks on a laptop.

I would see what’s supported and then run something like Fluxbox as your WM

ashaman2007 ,

Looks like a whole bunch of conversation about this topic can be found here:

…stackexchange.com/…/which-linux-or-bsd-distribut…

Dirk ,
@Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

Maybe let go of this ancient hardware? Seriously: Get a Raspberry Pi (or whatever SOC computer is the latest trend) and install whatever distribution you want. You get 100x the performance for 100x less power consumption. It’s great to reuse old hardware and all, but THAT old?

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s just for experiments and learning. Why judging? Also a Pi is like $100 here and it is a big deal for me

Telorand ,

Dunno if it would work or not, but I wonder if a minimal NixOS install would work.

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

I think it’s easier to write your own kernel from scratch than learning how to install something in Nix lol

Telorand ,

It’s not that bad 😆. But there’s definitely a learning curve, something I’m working on figuring out myself, at the moment. There’s some practice guides, but it’s certainly a unique beast.

nossaquesapao ,

A long time ago I tried to run multiple distros in live mode on it and got only one (Puppy) to work. Display, sound, ethernet and pretty much everything worked fine. GPU seemed to be an issue though because NVidia and I couldn’t install the driver (it was skill issue and I think it’s possible to do). But now it doesn’t work for some reason.

Puppy linux has 3 versions, based on different distros. Maybe you tried one version back then, and now a different one?

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

I know and I think I tried the same version

fpslem ,

Puppy was going to me my suggestion too, before I read that you’d already used it. Maybe try some of the other versions? If you used a Debian- or Ubuntu-based Puppy, you could try a Slack-based one, or vice-versa. Puppy’s organization is a little confusing, in my opinion, but it does give a user some options. You also might try some of the “puplets” that aren’t official Puppy distros but are part of the Puppy family.

puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/family-tree.html

cocolopez ,
@cocolopez@lemmy.world avatar

Void with Xfce has done wonders to my atom cpu with 2 GB of ram. Also iceWM has seen a new release that might worth checking

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Void doesn’t support the CPU architecture of that machine

AbidanYre ,

Tiny Core would probably run on it.

I have it on a PII 333MHz with 192MB of RAM from 1999. It grinds to a halt if I try to open pretty much any modern website though.

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

I just checked it and it seems to be an independent distro. Does it have a repo or do I have to compile everything I want to install?

AbidanYre ,

It has a repo with programs you can install. The selection is fairly limited though.

wiki.tinycorelinux.net/doku.php?id=wiki:install_a…

That computer is in the basement and I’m not having any luck finding a list of what’s available.

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Hmm I can’t find a browseable repo so idk if there’s anything useful for it but I might check it out. Thanks

qprimed ,

the repos are browsable inside the package manager - I would imagine they are browsable outside as well, but I have never had cause to do so.

honestly, give tinycore a shot. fire it up in a VM and take a look around - it really is an amazingly useful distro.

GolfNovemberUniform OP ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

My main Linux machine is too slow to run a VM of any kind

qprimed ,

understood. tinycore is a live installable distro, so you can still test it on bare metal.

pick the GUI flavor and kick the tires for a while.

superweeniehutjrs ,

If you do compile something, it is very easy to make it an installable package you could share. I’m not sure how the repos are managed

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