1.chatting in linux & 2.Linux for Pentium Lappy

[agent_js03]

1. Whenever I use the chat application that came with Redhat 9 I notice that whenever I try to X out of the buddy window the chat application closes out completely. Is there an option that allows you to be able to exit out of the buddy list and still keep the program open?

2. I have a friend who wants linux on his very slow pentium laptop with like 48mb of ram and a 2gb hard drive. What is a good version of linux that doesn't take up that much space?

Thanks.

[Paleo Pete]

Somehow thos one slipped by us, sorry...

1. Don't really know, we need more detailed info before we can give you a decent answer. kopete will leave an icon in the tool tray, I've used it before but that's about the only chat application I've tried.

2. That would be an older version, none of the newer distributions would fit on a 2GB drive at all, if it will boot to CD you might suggest Knoppix at least to try it out and see how it runs, and 48MB RAM is going to limit use of that machine no matter what OS you try to use. WIth some Linux versions it might dump you into a command line console instead of a GUI interface like Windows, if it doesn't have enough RAM to run the GUI. Knoppix I think will do that if it sees insufficient RAM and can't create a usable swap file.

[pop pop]

If I remember correctly, even my Knoppix distro required more RAM than that to run with the GUI, it defaulted to CLI when I tried booting it on a PII with 32MB.

[Paleo Pete]

Knoppix will try to create a swap file on the hard drive if it sees insufficient RAM, 128MB I think. Then if it can't create a swap file you're looking at a command prompt. I use it pretty often, I have 96MB in my laptop and it creates a swap file...

I don't think anything but a really old version of any distro is going to work on 48MB RAM. The 2GB drive will be really limiting too, but with a careful installation it would probably hold a basic Linux OS without extra window managers, etc. Sorry to be discouraging, some form of Linux should run on that laptop, but it might take some digging to find it. I've run Mandrake 8.2 on a P-233MMX w/256MB RAM, did just fine but a bit sluggish, so it will run on older hardware and some of the really small versions will run on 486 machines. The floppy distro designed as a firewall comes to mind, but that's a single-purpose oriented OS.