The problem is that many machines that old have only floppy disks, so
you can??™t use the CD or DVD that comes with this book. In that case, you can try ZipSlack (www
.slackware.com/zipslack), which is a Slackware version that comes on about 30+ floppy disk
images or a 100MB zip disk and can run on a 486 with at least 100MB of disk space.
RAM??”You should have at least 64MB of RAM to install most Linux distributions and
run it in text mode. Slackware might run on 8MB of RAM, but 16MB is considered the
minimum. If you are running in graphical mode, you will probably need at least 192MB.
The recommended RAM for graphical mode in Fedora is 256MB. A GNOME environment
generally requires a bit less memory to run than a KDE environment. If you are using a
more streamlined graphical system (that runs X with a small window manager, such as
Blackbox), you might get by with as little as 32MB. In that case, you might try Damn
Small Linux or Slackware.
DVD or CD drive??”You need to be able to boot up the installation process from a
DVD or CD. If you can??™t boot from a DVD or CD, there are ways to start the installation
from a hard disk or using a PXE install. Some distributions, such as Slackware or SUSE,
let you use floppy disks to boot installation. Once the install is booted, the software can
sometimes be retrieved from different locations (over the network or from hard disk,
for example).
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