32 bit laptop distro?

This gives me a flashback to 15(?) years back, when everyone was repeating this mantra…

It’s cool and I find it interesting too, but I don’t think it should be taken as a reason to think it’s a good distribution.
The most recent encounter I had with Slackware is on old school Slax, when it was still based on Slackware. I just remember how I couldn’t figure out how to even properly install anything, let alone configure.
Since then, I did not have any contact with this distribution anymore.

Though, now when I look back, I think the major reason I couldn’t figure out how Slackware works for some time was rooted in how little documentation and information was out there about it, at the time.
When searching something about Debian, Ubuntu or APT in general, I would find tons of resources, while for Slackware, I did not find anything.

In 1995, I found Slackware’s documentation quite exhaustive and easy to read to help me figure everything out - back then - there was no slashdot or stackexchange or whatever, search engines were mostly altavista, or webcrawler, or even gopher (not http). Fortunately where I worked (a large hospital in 1995), I could print out all 150-200 pages of it on a laser printer (unfortunately before duplex printing became more common - if it was two sided pages, I might even have kept it!).

As part of Y2K “mitigation” in 1999 - I came across a Slackware 3.4 or later, maybe 4?

Anyway - it was a squid proxy and mail MTA (dial up to ISP) for a bunch of bean counters at an accountancy firm, a fairly beefy 486 - but - some other propellor head from some other company, had deployed this solution with NO doco, and EVERYTHING was just very poorly written, NO COMMENTING, shell scripts… yikes!

Flashed the BIOS to be Y2K compliant, but that O/S filled me with misgivings (mainly - was there any scripts that assumed two digit years? How would my colleagues go supporting this pile of crap). I ended up, over a weekend, taking it home, and installing Red Hat 6 (not RHEL!) on it - then setting up from whatever their ncurses based sysadmin tool (was it “anaconda”?), to do the dial up, install squid, and configure it as an MTA (yet another HIDEOUS Groupwise [Novell’s bundled solution “Small Business Server”]) and then documenting it ALL 'cause I was the ONLY Linux / UNIX guy in that outsourcing / managed service company - and I know what it’s like to come across something completely unfamiliar - like a Linux box when you’re a Novell Netware guru or a “clickety-click-click” Wintel administrator.

So - while I sometimes feel nostalgic for Slackware - I also remember how primitive it was - and thank the F–K we got stuff like Red Hat, then SUSE, then Ubuntu (never really tried Debian until well into the 2000’s).

I guess, it was also hard to understand, as I didn’t know that much about Linux back then. It was relatively new territory for me and I was experimenting a lot, which is also the reason I landed on Slax, in the first place.

Seems like Classic cars… you can stand back and admire it, as long as someone else does the work.
I might someday try Slackware for fun, but for my old laptop I think it comes down to either Alpine or Antix.
Sorry @4dandl4 , MS would be too slow.

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Red Hat must be nearly as old as Slackware.

W7 can still be built into a pretty good OS, but it is not easy, since the retirement of IE. I believe I would have used either Mint 32bit or Debian 32bit, am not impressed with either Antix or Alpine.

I have used Debian/Xfce 32 bit. It is OK. Void is faster. I imagine Alpine might be at least as good as Void. Gentoo was just too slow compiling, but it would probably run well.

Alpine is the most optimised and minimal but at the same time complete Linux distribution, as far as I know.
Void is most likely bigger and less minimal, than Alpine.

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Try Gentoo again!!!

Yes but not in the 32bit laptop.

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Well looks like fate decided for me. The laptop has a power supply problem.
So I have to shelve this project.
Back to Gentoo in the 64 bit desktop
Alpine and Antix shall have to wait

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@nevj
I changed a few gentoo use flags and am now updating gentoo. I was wondering about the reliability of that old laptop. Like you and I, we are not getting any yunger.

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I standardised on Dell and Lenovo… Both brands used the same charging connector for decades at least (e.g. I’ve still got a MASSIVE Dell brick I got with a “Desktop Replacement” [they’re now called "gaming laptops] laptop in 2004 - and it still works with the couple (3?) of Dell Latitudes I have…

And - thankfully finally, everyone is now standardising on USB C power (some vendors dragged there kicking and screaming by the likes of the EU) - I’ve been using a Lenovo USB C brick to power a MacBook Air for 4 months…

I must get that if/when I replace laptop. I have a Dell desktop bought as a refurbished job… it is fine.

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Apart from that Dell laptop I bought in 2004 - ALL my Dell laptops are essentially “refurbished”…

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I have been looking. What would you think of Dell Latitude 7480 laptop?
Is PCIE interface for SSD OK?

Neville, I happily keep using MX Linux ,32 bit ( latest version ) on old Pentium 4 machines.

Regards

Frank in County Wicklow - Ireland

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Hi Frank,
Yes any 32 bit Debian or MX will run OK. I was just searching for something a bit smaller and faster. Then the laptop died, so I gave up.
Cheers
Neville

I think the latest Dell laptop I have is a 7470?

Not sure whether the SSD is NVMe or M2.Sata - but it’s 512 GB… and has DDR4 RAM (16 GB)…

7480 sounds okay to me…

Tell the truth - I can’t really tell the difference, from the outside, between NVMe and M2.sata (I assume by “PCIE” you mean NVMe ?) - i.e. performance wise… I think m2.sata are becoming “rarer” to buy as new, but they’re a LOT cheaper when shopping on the likes of e-bay…


Was just reading a Lunduke article about “floppy sized” Linux distros and there’s :

http://www.toms.net/rb/
https://www.freesco.org/

And this one a tad larger than a floppy :

One would assume, floppy or minimal distros would be 32 bit…

I’m actually going to give TinyCore Plus a go on my Samsung N150 Netbook - technically 64 bit capable, but I’ve found that’s “academic” and it runs much better with a 32 bit distro (2 GB RAM and 64 GB SSD)…

Sounds OK thank you.
I was just concerned about Linux compatability of NVMe
It seems that is not an issue.