Syllable?

[persia]

Looking for an OS to run on an old single core Pentium 1 laptop.  Does anyone know anything about Syllable?

[trekiej]

It started off as Atheos( for Athena OS ) and forked to Syllable. It is base on Amiga and Beos.
I not for sure as to how it is.
It has been on EEEpc for a while now. It uses the Linux Kernel for the server software they advertise.

[trekiej]

Aros and Syllable may not be a bad combo.

[InTheSand]

Hi,

Might also be worth looking at DSL - it even runs on a 486 and is very usable on Pentiums in low three-digit clock speeds.

I had it going on a 486 DX2/66 with 32Mb RAM and it was pretty responsive. Loading Firefox took a while (and swapped out like nobody's business!) but it worked...

As with anything, the more RAM the better!

I often use DSL as a base to turn old machines into thin clients. Old beige Compaq Deskpros work quite well as Windows Terminal Server clients with DSL booting quickly and running X and the rdesktop client automatically...

 - Ali

[trekiej]

Puppy Linux is another good distro.
It runs on a ramdisk.

[InTheSand]

Hi there!

Yup, have also used Puppy Linux - a bit more professional-looking than DSL, but had higher hardware requirements the last time I looked.

I had Puppy running on this laptop that I'm typing on now for a while, as it was the only low-spec Linux distro that'd run nicely with a Winmodem. Ah, dial-up, how I don't miss that!

As an aside, this laptop's now a great LTSP client. Absolutely flies!

But for really old hardware and a native distro, you can't beat DSL!

 - Ali

[toca180]

Hi

Not really sure what you want to do with your computer but I did have Syllable installed on a spare partition a few months ago. It worked well but was a bit buggy. For me the web browser kept crashing. When it gets some of the bugs worked out and is a little more stable it should be a good OS.

Like the others have said a light weight Linux distro is always a good way to resurrect an old computer.

Rob