Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Which version I should download for me to run Linux on this w95 machine. It has only 32MB memory!!!!!

No Linux version from the last 20 years is going to work on this machine.
For general information, read this viewtopic.php?t=5127.
About the only Linux distro you might be able to run would be something from that era, like
Monkey Linux, BasicLinux, etc. And those may be difficult to find.
Wiz

Hallo, @arishy .....and to the kennels.

Hoo, boy. You're going to have 2 major issues with this thing. That 32MB RAM IS, apparently, upgradeable to 64MB - with some BIOS "tweaks":-

https://www.memorystock.com/memory/Tosh ... 110CT.html

.....and it seems it can be further upgraded (unofficially) to 96MB, though this involves some serious modifications to the motherboard itself.

https://avics.home.xs4all.nl/Lib96MB.html

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.....

Your biggest problem is going to be that 233MHz Pentium MMX. This is a very early, first-gen Pentium from the mid-to-late 90s. It doesn't even possess basic SSE instructions, and the majority of even lightweight Linux distros require at least SSE2s to even be capable of booting the kernel.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/53

https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium/ ... 03233.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_SIMD_Extensions

I hate to say it, but that CPU will preclude any distro I can think of from booting.....at all. Whilst I agree in general with m'colleague above, purely from a RAM perspective, you might be able to do something with TinyCore - the 'base' version only requires around 23MB, although it needs around 46MB to actually run. TinyCore is the spiritual successor to DSL (DamnSmallLinux) by Robert Shingledecker, and will, it seems, run with the Pentium MMX's immediate predecessor, the 80486 (better known as the i486DX2), so......there's possibilities there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I486

I don't think you'll be able to do anything with the current batch of Puppies.....and even many of the older ones will turn their noses up at those specs. But, others here may know differently.....

We'll do what we can to help, though I suspect you're on a hiding to nothing. We'll see; we have some very knowledgeable guys'n'gals here!

(shrug...)

Mike.

The best operating system for Libretto is Win 98 SE. Nice machine for doing a bit of retro gaming though!