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Linux distro for an ancient Pentium PC (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Ya, that's exactly my thought. I had Penitum 1 and Pentium 3/4 during those years. Pretty sure they are 686 and beyond.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Could even be Cryix or a VIA or something from back then. VIA lacked cmov and will not boot i686.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Yes I am sure it's not 686. 686 distros don't boot anyways

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I'm with you. 2001 and DDR... there's something else going on with the failure to boot. I don't think the Pentium 3 ever supported DDR, so this is probably a Pentium 4. If truly a model released in 2001, it would be Willamette, but that required RDRAM. DDR support was introduced with Northwood in 2002. On the other hand, it could be the P4 that was new in 2004, Prescott, and the 2001 statement comes from the first year the P4 was released.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

We really need to see info from the BIOS

exact CPU model, RAM speed, etc.

As others have pointed out, this is a pretty anachronistic build

i586 with DDR1 is just weird, so it's possible there's some really niche hardware and you may need an exotic kernel (or kernel options) to get anything to boot.

That said: have you just tried running a standard live or install CD from that time period? You could try booting a 2001 Slackware installer to see what happens.