SliTaz Linux is my preferred ‘Linux on old hardware’ solution. And I do mean old hardware. I mean single core, 400 MB RAM, year 2000 hardware.
SliTaz Linux (slitaz.org) is based on 3.X series Linux kernels, which has some disadvantages, but one major advantage — it is more compact, and well suited to quite old hardware. That means that the SliTaz live image is only about 50 MB(!) yet gives you Gparted, web access and a whole bunch of other tools. It runs very smoothly and responsively on very old hardware — for example, I am using a Compaq E500 with a Pentium III and 380-odd MB of RAM, and everything is fine.
The computer has a CD drive, not a DVD.
Some parameters from Hardinfo:
Pentium III Coppermine, 1 GHz (1 core)
381,240 KB RAM
It has an 80 GB IDE HDD, with FreeDOS installed on the front of the partition (that is, on /dev/sda1).
Here is the process of getting SliTaz installed and working well.
(1) Went to the website and downloaded the 4-in-1 iso file (32 bit, not 64). For example, http://distro.ibiblio.org/slitaz/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling.iso.
(2) Burned it to a CD using another machine (this machine cannot read DVDs); for example, on Cygwin, where E is my CD drive:
$ wodim -v speed=4 dev=E: -data ./slitaz-rolling.iso
(3) Booted from the CD.
(4) Chose my keymap (en_GB).
(5) Booted into the live desktop.
(6) Applications > System tools > Gparted.
(7) Created a swap partition immediately after the FreeDOS one (ideally swap goes at the front of the disk, but I did not feel like complexifying things by moving partitions around), then a root partition (sda3) then a /home (sda4). The size of the root (/) partition really depends o how much software you plan to install. Noted the partition names for future reference.
(8) Applications > System tools > SliTaz installer
(9) Now, the installer is pretty easy to use, all you need to do it read each screen thoroughly. It has a field for nearly everything you need to do, so if you just fill them in, it works pretty well. For example, I put sda3 in a root partition, sda4 as /home, filled out user and password details, asked for the bootloader to be installed to the MBR, clicked Proceed and then let it go.
(10) Eject the CD and reboot.
(11) It booted no worries. It is slightly odd, because it flashes up a long boot menu full of generic entries that are not relevant, then launches a GRUB4DOS boot screen from which SliTaz actually boots; but it works fine.
(12) But FreeDOS did not appear on either boot menu. The simplest thing was to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add these lines to the bottom:
title FreeDOS1.3RC3 root (hd0,0) chainloader /kernel.sys
This just sets the partition to boot (in GRUB language) and says what to load. Works!
An alternative may be to install GRUB2, but I did not do that. This entry affects the second of the 2 bootloader screens.
(13) Now it is a matter of customising the system, which mostly works through tazpanel. You can set your time zone and all that, and install software.
System administration is done most readily through tazpanel:
(Applications > System tools > SliTaz Panel). You can elevate it to root by clicking on the little head-and-shoulders icon on the top right, which means you can browse the settings and meddle with anything in userspace, and then elevate for serious admin; it is very simple, once you know the little trick.
That’s actually one of my comments about the whole SliTaz ystem; it can do a lot, but how is not always obvious. For example, to install the MS core fonts, you install a package called something like ‘get-msttffonts’ or something, then run that command from a root command line.
Also, all the package management tools can be done on the command line if you want, so while you can use the GUI for package updates — all with dependency resolution — you can do it from the command line if you prefer.
The range of software is somewhat limited compared to one of the big distributions, but given what it can do in such limited space, and how fast it runs on old hardware, I think SliTaz hits a pretty sweet spot.
(14) To instal TeX Live, I did not use any SliTaz packages, but went to the TeX Live website and downloaded their own tool:
install-tl-unx.tar.gz
which I unpacked in a scratch space and ran; I ran it as root, but I believe that is not essential.
I also had to manually create /usr/local (as root), as I recall.
(15) Web browsing — mostly, you can use Midori. It works with Gmail, AOL mail, the Outlook web interface, and so on. It does not let me edit WordPress, and cannot work with some other heavy sites. I can post to WordPress using its post-via-email feature, though – – as I am now.
I don’t have enough RAM to install a bigger browser, so that is one limitation I am going to live with. You may have more RAM; I can always install a mail client, like Alpine.
(16) Still to do: I have not got the frame buffer to work. I have found that on low-spec machines, sometimes booting into a non-X mode and working in the frame buffer console can save a lot of RAM and allow things to happen a lot faster. So that would be good, but is far from essential.
By using rclone, I can access any cloud storage providers that don’t work through Midori. A lighter choice of office software (like Abiword) gives me anything I need in that respect, and my favourite old terminal program — mrxvt — is provided in the latest, patched version, which is great.
I also got my Broadcom/Linksys b43 wpc54g legacy PCMCIA wireless card to work, so I am free of Ethernet cables.
Conclusion
SliTaz does a huge amount in a very small space, with very few resources, and is pretty easy to use. I think it is amazing. I can (if I choose) now do real work on a laptop from the year 2000.
Some Linux distributions call themselves ‘light’ but still need over 1 GB of RAM. I guess by 2022 standards 1 GB is not much RAM. If you have genuinely old hardware (say, 20 years), and in this case a laptop, so not the fastest chip that was around 20 years ago either, then SliTaz is a very useful option. It is not as slim as Tiny Core, say, but it is (in my limited experience) easier to set up and administer, and can turn your old machine into (say) a VNC or X terminal, while also letting you use it directly to do some useful work via tools like Midori, Gnumeric,TeX Live and Abiword.
With less than 400 MB RAM, there are pieces of software that SliTaz offers that I am not going to install, but if you put SliTaz on a bigger machine, I have every reason to expect they would work. I am thinking of things like the GIMP.
You do need to do a few things yourself and solve a few problems by command line, but not often. If I was not dual booting, for example, the GRUB configuration would not have needed any editing.
2 thumbs up
DSPACE 