Hi Justbill. I know this sounds crazy, but often Linux distros will not install unless you have RAM in these sizes...
 
32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc.
 
That 48 RAM might be the problem. Take out to make it 32, or better yet, find a stick to add to it to make it 64. You'd be amazed at how well that box will run if you can spring for 128.

Actually, Puppy needs at least 64 mb of ram to run. The reason is that the complete system runs on ram off the Live CD. Your best option is to upgrade the ram. Even the less memory intensive distros want more ram than what is on your machine. Even Vector Linux has this 64 mb ram requirement.
 
You can run Puppy on this system, if you used the cd on another box with 128 mb ram to do a hard drive install, then put that hard drive back on the older box. Take a look at the Puppy forums and you will get the idea.

Everything said above is correct. However, I had Debian Sarge running in a 486 with 16 MB of RAM. I used it as home server for long time, no X of course. To install Debian 2 floppies are needed and a good Internet connection.
 
You can run X with 48 MB, but use one of those lightweight window managers. KDE and such are not suitable. For instance, when installing Debian do not install 'Desktop Environment'. Install only base system and add X and a window manager of choice manually. You will see there is plenty of hdd space left after install.

Yes, but Puppy runs all in ram, unless you do a hard drive install, but you need 129 mb of ram to run the install script from within Puppy. You can also add swap space now in a hard drive install of Puppy, which uses Fvwm95 and Xvesa is by default. This is where the problem lies in Live cd disks.

You should have sufficient RAM is you want to run live cds given that the entire OS runs off the RAM.

From the Puppy Linux main page;
 

Quote:Obviously, some objectives have qualifications, for example, to load totally into RAM the PC must have either 128M RAM or failing that a swap partition. 
You might be interested in what DSL users have to say about older systems and limited ram here.

You may also want to check into BeatrIX. They claim it is designed to run on older systems better. I have it installed to my HD and it is blindingly fast! It's lineage is: Debian - Knoppix - Morphix - Ubuntu - BeatrIX.

Thank you all for all these great suggesstions! I haven't had time to mess with this old box, but will try some of the suggestions tonight. If all else fails, the idea: "You can run Puppy on this system, if you used the cd on another box with 128 mb ram to do a hard drive install, then put that hard drive back on the older box. Take a look at the Puppy forums and you will get the idea." Both machines have network cards in them (mine and my friends), and my machine has 192mb ram, could I hook the two together through the network cards, and do it that way (I can't believe I just asked that, I'm a newbie, what am I thinking:-) ). I would need lots of help and advice on that one. I will sheck the "Puppy forum link, and Beatrl X. Can't do anything till this evening (central time U.S.), gotta go to work.
Thanks Again
Justbill
 
 

I just have a little time to post this for now, have to pick up the little one at Daycare....but her it goes.
 
When you do a hard drive install of Puppy, it will create a floppy disk to boot the distro from. The boot floppy is created relative to the designation of the hard drive. If you install from another system, you need to disconnect the hard drive in the system that you are doing the install from and make the hard drive (that you will use on the older box)the primary master in the installation box. For example, if the hard drive in the box is primary master, the boot floppy will point to the partition as the first drive in the box, in most cases hda (whatever). So, when you do the install to a primary master drive, when you put the hard drive back in the old box, it need to also be primary master.
 
1. disconnect the drive in thwe 128 mb ram box and install the drive from the older box. Do the install.
 
2. Remove the drive and place it back into the older box as primary master.
 
3. reconnect the drive in the 128 mb box, as it was, most likely primary master.
 
Puppy should boot on the old box, the floppy pointing to Puppy on ther Primary master drive, at the correct partition, all relative to how the install was done and the designation of the hard drive.
 
To clarify, if you put the hard drive from the old box as primary slave or other, the boot floppy would point to the primary slave, say hdb whatever. If you then put the drive back into the box as primary master, it will still look for the primary slave drive (hdb) not hda, which is likely where the drive is now in the old box.
 
So you avoid re-jumpering drives and such when you disconnect the drive in the 128 mb box, keeping things relative to where the drive is set for the older box originally.
 
Puppy has two hard drive installation options. One that will do an install point to an already present vfat partition, making a file called Puppy001, whch is really a compressed ext2 file, which Windows would see just as a file.
 
Option #2 installs Puppy to a Linux partition, which it will be created for you during the install. You just point it to the space (partition) that you have on the system, that you want to install to. In your case, you would tell Puppy to takeover the hard drive (already existing partition) and convert the partiton to a linux ext2 partition.
 
In either install, the boot floppy will be made to boot to the correct partition.
 
A so called Network install has been talked about by some hardcore Puppy users, but this will not work, unless you really know what you are doing, if at all. Puppy looks for appropriate partitions locally, not on a network, or on two systems linked together.

Well, I took the harddrive out of the pavilion, and put it in my machine, and installed DSL. The install went fine, but when I put the harddrive back in the Pavilion, when it got to the first screen, the screen was blue (black on my machine), no icons, just a FAQ box on the screen, and when you right click the mouse, I get some different options (power down, system, window manager, etc.).
 
When I installed, I selected "enhanced" (I think, it was late), and was connected to the internet (cable modem). At this point, all I can think to do is, do this all over again, only choose some different install options, and ge the package a little smaller.
 
I do have a boot floppy for DSL, but when I tried that, it told me "I passed an undefined video mode", then that it "couldn't find Knoppix file system, dropping you to a limited shell".
 
I know that DSL is on the harddrive because, when that hd was in my machine, it worked fine.
 
Unless I get another suggestion, I may run "wipe drive" on that machine tonight, get everything off the hd, and try again.
 
Any thoughts?
 
Thanks
Justbill

Man! Why not to reconfigure the X server?!?

How would I go about doing that? And what would I reconfigure it to?
 
Justbill

Well, I finally got it done! Puppy is on that small box. I didn't get more ram yet, so it runs a little slow, but its installed to the hd and does run. One thing I would like to change but don't know how, is the way it boots. I have to have the floppy disk it made durring the install, in to start the OS. Does it not have anything like lilo or grub? Is there any way I can get it to boot without the floppy?
 
Anyhow, Thanks to all for the help with this one!
Justbill

You need to have lilo or grub from another distro install, or boot from a floppy or CD. Lilo appears quirky with this, so I recommend grub. Puppy does not have grun or lilo included. However, if you want to boot from a cd, one Puppy user has developed a way to boot from a cd. Given the hard drive space on this system, why not make a boot cd and just leave it in the cdrom drive? See this post.

since I did the install on the Pavilion, (Taking the harddrive out of that machine and putting it in mine), I've had a little quirk in my box. One of the OS's I looked at for his machine was "BeatrIX". I ran the live cd for BeatrIx on my machine, with his harddrive installed in my machine. I ended up going with Puppy, but the quirk I have with mine now that everything is put back is, I get a pop up durring login. Right after I type in my user name and password, I get a box that says,
 
"Could not look up internet address for BeatrIX
This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly
It may be possible to correct the problem by adding
BeatrIX to the file /etc/hosts".
 
And then I get the option to: "login anyway" or "try again"
I just choose "login anyway"
 
Also, I opened "terminal" and looked around in there and noticed now in that, it says
[bill@Beatrix ~]
which is not how it used to be.
 
So far this has not really been a problem, just a minor irritation at login.
Is there a way I can correct this? I guess what I would like to do is remove BeatrIX, I'm not using it on this box, and the part that I don't understand is, my harddrive was not installed in this box when I was running the BeatrIX live cd, how in the world did it end up in here? Not that it really matters.
 
Thanks
Justbill
 
 

Did you do a hard drive install of BeatrIX on either machine?
 
What bootloader are you using on YOUR box currently? From which distro?

I tried to install BeatrIX, on the other harddrive (the pavilions), using my machine, but ther were some problems so I ended up installing Puppy. My machine is using the grub bootloader from Fedora Core 3, which is the distro I am using.
 
Thanks
Justbill