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.
I found this in the wastelands of Google: https://www.howtogeek.com/linux-distributions-to-breathe-new-life-into-old-hardware/
I read the guide and it seems pretty solid.
If it is not x86 is it the Itanium ISA?
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?
It’s just for experiments and learning. Why judging? Also a Pi is like $100 here and it is a big deal for me
antix never let me down…
looks like they have an i386 iso.
http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mxlinux/isos/ANTIX/Final/antiX-23.1/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.
haven’t testet, but looks like there are bookworm i386 isos.
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/On Debian, i386 is now i686.
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#i386-is-i686
They are really i686 though ( from Bookworm on ).
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!
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
Are you sure it’s not a 686? Because apparently the Pentium Pro from 1995 is already a 686, by 2001 the Pentium 4 was already out.
Yes I am sure it’s not 686. 686 distros don’t boot anyways
I’m still skeptical. At the time of the original Pentium (the last 586 from Intel, the fastest of which was 300 MHz), the usual amount of RAM was something like 16 or 32 MB. A 586 with 1 GB of RAM is extremely weird and probably impossible unless it’s some sort of high-end server. This does not check out.
Oh and DDR is also from around the time of the Pentium 4. I don’t think there exists a machine that has both DDR and an original Pentium (aka 586). Again, this does not check out and is probably impossible.
There could be another reason it won’t boot.
Could even be Cryix or a VIA or something from back then. VIA lacked cmov and will not boot i686.
Ya, that’s exactly my thought. I had Penitum 1 and Pentium 3/4 during those years. Pretty sure they are 686 and beyond.
Consider antiX. It’s very lightweight, supports 32 bit and you’ll have access to the Debian Repos.
Hannah Montana Linux. Unironically.
What 32 bit distros have you tried? I would think most would still support Pentium as kernel support has not been removed.
AntiX and Q4OS are both decent choices.
For a machine that limited, I would probably give Damn Small Linux a shot:
https://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
It is Debian based ( actually AntiX ) and so it has access to the full Debian universe ( 32 bit at least ) but has a curated list of applications well tailored to low-resource environments.
Some have said Debian is i686 only but this is what Debian says:
https://www.debian.org/ports/#:~:text=Debian supports all IA-32,)%2C%20Cyrix%20and%20other%20manufacturers.&text=Port%20to%20the%20little%2Dendian,ISA%20and%20hardware%20floating%2Dpoint.
I’ll throw Alpine Linux into the mix. Not sure how well it supports older hardware, but it’s really small.
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?).
Yes there are modernized versions of Windows XP with updated certificates and whatnot.
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).
Debian has images for i386: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/
But… frankly the power consumption of that thing will be just crazy. Take for example this example, a more modern Pentium D vs a Pi:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/6390478?baseline=5583060
Just reading through the comments, and your post. You’d honestly have a much better time getting a Pi of some sort and just running that. This is antiquated hardware that is going to have all sorts of headaches even if you do get it running.
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.
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?
It has a repo with programs you can install. The selection is fairly limited though.
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/doku.php?id=wiki:install_apps
That computer is in the basement and I’m not having any luck finding a list of what’s available.
Hmm I can’t find a browseable repo so idk if there’s anything useful for it but I might check it out. Thanks
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.
My main Linux machine is too slow to run a VM of any kind
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.
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
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
BSD is an option but I heard it’s slower and idk anything about how it works and how to install it
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.
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
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.
Slackware says it still supports everything that the Linux kernel supports ( which would include Pentium ).
http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general
Find it here:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/slackware-isos-and-torrents-4175709111/
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
Void doesn’t support the CPU architecture of that machine
