Which Linux for my system 2258

I did put Slackware 7.0 on a 10meg 486, but it did not install until I added that extra 2megs of RAM. After the fact, it seemed like had I known what I learned from the installation I could have gotten by with 8megs, but by then it was unnecessary.

I would say a big question that has to be asked is "Why?". I'd bought that used 486 to run Linux, because it was cheap, but then waited a couple of years to come across a cheap CDROM drive for it. When I installed Linux in 2000, the computer was well past its prime. It wasn't just the small amount of RAM, it was the 240meg hard drive, and the slow CPU. The experience at that time was worthwhile, because the small installation I made made me realize I wanted a better system, so I bought a 200Mhz Pentium for $150, which not only had far more memory and a larger hard disk (which meant I could put the whole distribution on, rather than having to figure out as a novice to Linux what to install), but had a higher CPU speed and a faster bus speed. There was a big difference between it and the 486, maybe a bigger leap than the difference between that 200MHz Pentium and the 1GHz Pentium I moved to a few years later.

In 2000, the only computers I was seeing in the garbage were 486s running around 50MHz. But the computers I'm seeing being tossed out, indeed have found that way since about 2002, are far better machines, about what I actually bought in mid-2001. I brought home a few of them in the early days, but more recently there isn't any reason to do so. Before long, we'll be seeing faster computers being tossed out, indeed that seems to be the case elsewhere (or maybe even here, with others luckier than I to find them first).

So there has to be a good reason to run that old a machine. I suppose someone might use it as a router, though again there are better machines available for the taking. As a general purpose Linux computer, anyone will be severely disappointed at this point. The common "it seems a shame to just toss it out", there is validity to it, but there has to be a point when one gives up on the old. If nothing newer was showing up in the garbage, then there is obviously good reason to use what's available, but I've come to decide that when something newer comes along, the oldest goes out (I strip them, so the metal goes to metal recycling).

Michael