Converting old machine into a print server for home office
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Q:
I'd like to setup an OLD P100, 72MB RAM, 3GB hd machine I have holding a door open to be used as a print server in my home office. Can you recommend a good distro that:
(a) Allows me to boot the install from a floppy since this machine cannot boot from CD. I can ultimately run the install from CD - I just need to boot from floppy. The only boot devices this BIOS can see are A: or C:.
(b) Will run on a machine with 72mb of RAM.
(c) Does not require a lot of HD space.
A:
You should take a look at SUSE Linux 9.1 Professional. We heard from an expert who said:
I recently installed SUSE Linux 9.1 Professional on a Pentium 90 with 64 GB and 1,4GB hd. It takes ages to install and 1.4gb is definitely not much for it, but it ultimately works.
Just be sure to choose install type "manual" (i.e. textual) and that you do a minimum install, since you will not want this computer to run KDE or Gnome or OOorg. However I would probably install minimum X to have more shells available and possibly locally start yast2 or sax2 in graphics mode (via fvwm2). Nevertheless my preferred way to operate such a computer is running it "headless" and doing anything from remote, either via X forwarding or good old console via ssh.
By the way, if you are equipped with an ide cd-rom, you most likely could boot from the first cdrom, simply ignoring your bios.
One thing that is needed to make this happen is "smart boot manager". I use it on my pentium and on my "either cd or floppy, not both and cd drive definitely not bootable, sorry, Sir" Compaq LTE notebooks (Pentium 120, 48gb) to great success.
BTW: this machine seems to be a bit "oversized" for a print server. Maybe you consider adding some functionality like a faxserver or firewall or. After all it's Linux!
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