Pretty sure AntiX would work on this
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i didnt see anyone mentioning puppy linux, its an option.
you might even be able to run a twm or openbox style GUI if you have enough ram.
I run puppy Linux 4.20 on a p3 laptop with 192 mb of ram. It's fine. It feels as heavy as windows me. A p2 with 32 mb of ram might be a bit tough.
Hasn't that been unmaintained for years? Puppy is the spiritual successor.
It was updated this year. They moved on from the mini-CD limit (50MB?) to a regular CD (700MB). Spiritual successor, newer target.
I remember when full size distros were 700MB.
It is really just an AntiX spin now
so basically Debian 😉
gentoo. i'm not even gonna look this up but i'd be surprised if immolo hasn't installed in that platform yet ;)
I wonder if there's a Gentoo binpkg host for i486 specifically, since it might almost be practical then. (Or you could set up your own.)
I compiled a minimal custom Buildroot once for a Pentium II to do some backups with USB support. Kerbel 5.17.
@nichtburningturtle I run Arch Linux on a Pentium 2 E5300 and with some system tweaks like using Dwm/St, less than 1000 packages and args on some software it run smoothly.