Edit: I am trying to put linux on a compaq armada 1700.
Not Linux but Haiku would run on it I think.
@nichtburningturtle The Pentium II is 32-bit and possesses an MMU, so provided you have adequate memory, pretty much any 32-bit distro such as puppy linux or antix should work fine. Newer Ubuntu which is now 64-bit only will not.
I have Tiny Core running on a PII 333MHz machine with 128MB of RAM
Fli4l should. Back when it was new it was meant to fit on a floppy and run on 3’86 machines. It’s for running a home router.
Fli4l is still around?! Crazy. I used that back in 2002 or so to turn an old i386 with 3 ISA HP 100Mbit network cards into a router + fileserver combo. Good times.
NetBSD
Rule 1
Rule 1 applies to posts, not comments.
Overruled.
Won’t work with much hardware
Works with plenty of hardware, especially something that would run on such a platform.
I have found it to lack support for WiFi and video acceleration
You want wifi and video acceleration on a P2?
Intel Atom
That’s not what OP asked about.
Far enough
I just jumped the gun a bit
@nichtburningturtle I run Arch Linux on a Pentium 2 E5300 and with some system tweaks like using Dwm/St, less than 1000 packages and args on some software it run smoothly.
Did you use an archlinux32 i486 iso?
@nichtburningturtle nah, amd64 official arch linux
Didn’t know there were 64bit pentium 2 cpus.
I can’t find anything to anything to support their assertion that a E5300 is a “Pentium 2”, but the chip is from 2008, so it’s not relevant to your situation. Maybe they meant it was a Pentium from the Core2Duo time, but that’s still not a “Pentium 2”.
not this P2, I think OP is talking about the P2 from 1997, I had a P2 266MHz and was running it at 300 (75x4), 32MB of RAM, 4GB HD, it was the shit in 97
The Linux kernel works fine. How much ram do you have? I personally would build a custom image with buildroot.
Other option is Debian
32MB
I think that’s going to be more of a limitation than your CPU. Any chance of getting 256+ MB of ram?
The option is Debian.
Hasn’t that been unmaintained for years? Puppy is the spiritual successor.
@superkret funnily enough, it was updated in June this year
Development restarted this year, the 2024 version will be out soon, it’s in RC phase.
It was updated this year. They moved on from the mini-CD limit (50MB?) to a regular CD (700MB). Spiritual successor, newer target.
I remember when full size distros were 700MB.
It is really just an AntiX spin now
I’m running antix on a Pentium 2 with 512mb ram and it’s performing quite nicely
This has 32mb
May I ask what you want to do with it?
I wanted to create an abomination, but it’s to old. I’ll have to “upgrade” to a newer machine.
Spend $12 on this memory module and you’re g2g for almost anything.
Pretty sure AntiX would work on this
Is nobody gonna ask?!? Why do you have a pentium 2? I like old hardware as much or more than the next guy but man that’s old. And this from a guy who has a working Commodore 64 🤣
I never even thought to ask “why”…
I’ve got a 500mhz Celeron from the P3 days, it runs OS/2 and has an ISA EPROM burner card in it.
retro enthusiast community has been growing a lot in recent years, especially with youtube channels like 8-bit guy, LGR, MVG and such
I mean I guess. Just in my opinion a Pentium 2 is too new to be old and too old to be new. Something like 386 or a Coco2, that’s cool.
I deal with a lot of old hardware in my lab but sometimes it’s just too much trouble. But whatever floats your boat. Last thing I’ll be is judgey about what brings you happiness. I mean I’m currently playing with Proxmox on a 2013 Mac Pro because I think it’s fun. And some people (cough …cough… my wife) wonder why 🤣
I run Proxmox on a 2103 trashcan. It is awesome.
Where did you get a trashcan from 2103 you time traveler you… I want one.
throwing Linux on ancient hardware is a time honored tradition
Some time ago I scalvanged some old hardware my old school was gonna throw out.
Oh I get it. I hate to see hardware that could be useful being thrown out. Hence the reason I have stacks of 1TB hard drives with no real use.
I have a long term goal of running my home automation system on that commodore for no other reason than it’s weird. So I get it.
As others have suggested, the only option I can think of is Tinycore but you’ll need to get the Microcore version (aka Core ISO with no GUI). This should run on 32MB RAM but leaves you very little headroom with a very barebones install, and obviously no GUI of any kind. [Source]
I looked up the Compaq Armada 1700 and saw that it came with 32MB soldered with one slot available to expand up to 160MB. It’s a long shot, but if you can find a working 32MB, 64MB or 128MB memory module for this you should be able to run TinyCore with a GUI. Adding more RAM would also open up options like Slackware.
It’s not clear to me if Debian will work or not, even with maxing out the RAM in this computer. There is a low memory install mode you could try but I think even that requires at least 256MB which is beyond the theoretical maximum this computer supports.
If all you want to do is prove to yourself that you can install Linux on this computer then Microcore might be worth a try. If you want a usable system with a GUI then you’re probably going to have to add more RAM.
This could be a long shot, but so long as you do NOT connect it to the internet, you could try sourcing a Linux distribution from back when this computer was released, I’m thinking Redhat Linux (before RHEL and Fedora was a thing) or Debian a very old version of Debian. However even if you do succeed in this it’s probably not going to be usable.
Good luck!
