Looks like with using Small Linux you need 4MB for an X Windows system. It's going to be pretty basic. (More inline.)

Brian Kelsay

...

...

Leo Mauler <> 12/02/04 09:53AM >>>

I just wanted to mention that a lot of older CD-ROM drives don't like miniCDs and business card sized CDs (or at least don't seem to boot from them). So even though DamnSmallLinux does fit on a miniCD, go ahead and burn it on a full-sized CD for those older laptops that still have CDs.

Correct. And some old CD-ROM drives won't boot to CD. YMMV. You can still do a boot from floppy and hand off to CD. The full-size CDs have a greater chance of working in the old drives and burn to CDR not RW at 4x or under. Again, YMMV, but this is from my experience.

From: Jonathan Hutchins <> Date: 12/2/04 10:14AM The problem I've encountered with this idea is that Xwindows itself is pretty resource intensive, and many of the older systems have video cards that don't have Linux drivers. At best, you may get 640x480x16 colors. You can off-load most of the work to the server (talk to the Lumensoft guys), but you still have to get a basic Xwindows setup going. 4M of RAM is going to be a distinct challenge.

On the Linux driver issue, most will work with a basic vesa driver, even the old ones. There are a very small number that don't. http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/kdrive.html The KDrive Tiny X Server Kdrive is used on DamnSmall Linux. http://www.linuxdevices.com/links/LK6129039469.html Short Tiny X article on embedded hardware. "Typical X servers based on Tiny-X can fit in less than 1MB on x86 CPUs." A 386 Twinhead laptop with 4MB RAM, 81MB hard drive: http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?Small_Linux_Notes_By_Levi_Wald... http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?SmallX FAQ and Howto

From: Gerald Combs Date: 12/2/04 10:26AM Are there any VNC clients that can use the console directly? If so, you could run your X11 server remotely.

If you have an LTSP setup, you are using remote X. From that you can run some form of VNC, like Xvnc. Without a full LTSP server setup you can do this manually. Set your machine with X running to enable XDMCP. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/ Their example starts X on connection via shell or ssh http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/XDM-Xterm/ http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6713 http://probing.csx.cam..ac.uk/about/xdmcp.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDMCP http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/using-remote-session.html http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue27/kaszeta.html a decent example http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?Remote_X_Display Connect to the server from the console of the old PC. If you have your session automated, then X will just auto start your session when you login. Other wise you will need to run "X --query <ip address or hostname>" to get a specific server or "X --broadcast" to connect to any listening Xserver. Then run whatever VNC program is on the PC hosting the Xserver.