HD Install :: 8MB of system memory - need to circumvent ramdisk

Deli linux can do the trick. 8 MB is no joy with dsl which requires at least 32.
yours
z

32 is pretty much minimum for a frugal (without using lowram, etc.)

Others have gotten 16mb to work - 8 may be pushing it but I don't know the limits of the traditional hd-install.

Use Deli if you need X,
Use FreeSco if your looking for router\print server\samba server\small http server\DNS\...

Another alternative with X-windows is http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/.

If you want to pursue with DSL you could take out the disk, install it as primary master in another pc (assuming it is primary master in your 8 MB box), install DSL and put the disk back.

I may have set a record for the most resource deprived machine to run DSL. I installed it on the 486dx2-66 with 8MB ram by moving the HDD to a better machine for the installation, however, it runs in a degraded state when I put it back in the older machine. X fails, so it drops to a command prompt.

I have tried DeLi linux, and the live CD failed to fully boot (like DSL), and I gave up on it. It may be worth a shot to try the same approach on DeLi that worked for DSL. Though I'm not sure what could be more lean than Xvesa for an Xserver.

I looked at the requirements for BasicLinux, and found it surprizing that the native linux installation requires 12 MB of ram, while the version that runs as a layer on top of DOS requires less memory (3MB).

FreeBSD could be promising. Version 2.2.9 runs on 8MB of RAM.

Next Page...
original here.