> From: Bob Blick [mailto:bobblick@COVAD.NET]
> Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 8:55 AM

>> Can you make a suggestion of a Linux distribution  available for
>> download that could be easily installed and doesn't uses more than
>> 200MB (of HD when installed) but still can run OpenOffice, Mozilla
>> and such?

> No. Basically, unless you are an "expert Linux hacker" you
> must devote at least
> as much, usually more, computer resources to a Linux install
> than a Windows XP
> install.

I'm hoping that was intended to be a bit of overstatement.  Yes, you probably
will need to become very familiar with Linux to get Linux, a windows manager,
OpenOffice, and Mozilla all running on 200MB hard disk.  One option might be
putting part of the system on a CD ROM.

If you can find an old 2GB drive, I'm sure you'll have no problem getting it all
working.  About one year ago, my wife (definitely not an expert Linux hacker)
got upset after becoming the victim of an Outlook worm.  So she installed RedHat
7.1 on her PC.  All she used was the RedHat installation manual, and some notes
about her hardware that I had scribbled in the book.

When she was done, the whole install fit on about 2GB worth of hard drive
partitions and ran cleanly.  That's 10 times the 200MB size requested, but not
something that I would expect XP to do well with.

A few months ago, the Linux Journal ran an article titled "The Ultimate (but
Small) Linux Box!", a copy of it can be found here:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6169

"Small" is in terms of RAM, not disk space, but some of the comments address
limited disk space.

I've followed some of the tips and played with some other applications that I
found.  Now I have a 166MHz Linux box with 64MB of RAM at home that responds
faster than my 1.2GHz Win2K box with 256MB of RAM at work.

-Mike

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics
(like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics