[ltp] Re: ISO Suggestions for 750P

[Daniel Pittman]

"Chris Schumann" <cschumann@twp-llc.com> writes:
>> From: Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net>
>> "Chris Schumann" <cschumann@twp-llc.com> writes:
>> 
>> > I've got a ThinkPad 750P here that holds a special place in my geek
>> > heart.  It's my first PC ever, and I want to put Linux on it.
>> >
>> > It's got a 33MHz 486, 12GB disk (BIOS sees 8GB), 36MB RAM, a WD90C24
>> > video chip with 1MB VRAM, and a CS4248 audio chip, and an untethered
>> > pen.
>> >
>> > I've tried Gentoo (the pain!), Debian and Slackware. I have a floppy
>> > drive and network card, so a lot of distributions start installing
>> > just fine.

[...]

>> Honestly, it makes very little real difference which distribution you
>> use -- most of the resource use will be in the graphical software you
>> intend to run.

[...]

> There are some distributions that are very difficult to install
> without access to a CD drive directly attached to the machine, 

Well, my experience is mostly confined to the big 3 ^W 4 these days, of
RedHat, SuSE and Debian/Ubuntu, but all of those offer a network install
option.

So, the process would be to build the boot floppies -- or just network
root -- and use those to fire up a network install from a real system.

> and some that just won't install without 64MB RAM, but otherwise, I
> agree it shouldn't matter too much... other than most of my Linux
> experience has been with Red Hat and Fedora.

Hrm.  Perhaps some of them don't manage that any longer, though.  I know
that I wouldn't /want/ to install recent Fedora releases on a machine
with that little memory, because the swapping would take forever. ;)


Actually, what I would probably do is install into a virtual environment
on a real computer, then use Linux-on-a-stick (of some sort) to allow me
to mkfs and tar the content over onto the laptop.  Viola, instant system
without the delay and pain. :)

> The VESA driver may work, but on this machine, VESA is not built into
> the BIOS. IIRC, for Windows 3.1 and Win95, I had to use a VESA driver,
> so I expect the display to be very tricky, and maybe require some
> hacking on my part.

Hrm.  Casting my memory back a long, long way I believe that this
particular dance might achieve your results:

* install FreeDOS on a tiny partition
* set the machine to boot from that
* load a VESA emulator
* use one of the DOS based boot loaders to set the video mode, and use
  the boring Framebuffer console
* Run X on top of that

I think that used to be a possible construct, though I have mostly
recycled my memories of that time, thankfully. :)

> I'm not looking for a good overall experience when using the machine -
> I want to learn more about getting hardware to work with Linux.
>
> The console does indeed work just fine, but getting the pen to work on
> the console doesn't really seem worthwhile to me. :)

Now, I can see that.  

> As for the kernel, I wouldn't mind compiling a custom jobby to reduce
> resource use. There are no SCSI, USB or even PCI buses on the thing.

On a recent distribution that shouldn't make any real difference -- all
those things are modular, and consume effectively no resources when not
required.

The kernel has gotten a bit bigger over major generations, but otherwise
really isn't much larger.

> But maybe I'll go looking for a distribution candidate and come back
> for help.

Well, given your aim to learn more about getting hardware working I
would suggest you try the X terminal approach[1], and experiment with
getting one of the embedded software environments running on it.

The DirectFB/GTK and Qt based stuff at handhelds.org would be an
interesting place to start -- plus, they already have pen support. :)

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  This teaches quite a lot about how X and distribution setup works,
     and can be quite educational to get working.[2]

[2]  I suspect this is less true if you just use Ubuntu and their LTSP
     setup, which does all the hard work for you. ;)

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