Can someone answer this question?

[billholm]

Does Linux really need at least 32MB of RAM?

[Salem]

No

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Linux/Distributions/Tiny/Floppy_Sized/?tc=1

You might need more memory to rebuild it, but some of these distributions claim you can rebuild in 16M

But note that these small distributions are going to be command line only. I would guess 32MB is the minimum if you want to run the GUI on top of Linux.

[billholm]

I now have a DosLinux distribution and have run it using 16MB. I think it used a swap file to compensate for memory.

Anyway, DosLinux worked fine. Unfortuately, the system wasn't permanent. It was loaded through RAM and everything within it is destroyed everytime I exit.

I'm trying to make a partition for it but I'm not quite sure how. I want it to load without using the RAM-dependent kernel.

Is it possible to directly boot it without have to go through loadlin?

[Troll_King]

Not sure if this is what you want, but if you want to directly boot into an OS than the OS must be installed onto a primary partition rather than an extended partition. The boot loader will allow you to choose which OS to boot into, otherwise for installation on an extended partition you have to use a boot disk every time you want to boot the OS.

[billholm]

DosLinux works well under my DOS partition. Well guys I've got another question.

I have two hard disks, one in which I ran DosLinux under DOS. On the other disk I have created a partition for my Linux. Then I'm gonna load my linux on the first disk.

Ok lets assume I'm now at my Linux shell. Now, how do I copy my Linux system from the first disk to my second disk (empty with a Linux primary partition? And if I did this, would I then be able to boot my Linux on the other disk? :D

[Salem]

Just install linux on your linux disk, then copy your important data from your DosLinux disk

Simply copying all the programs from one partition to another isn't likely to work, because at some low level, it has to tell the difference between a DOS partition and a Linux ext2 partition.

[billholm]

Ok I'll look into that :) I'll ask again when problems come.

[onurak]

you can even run linux with 4 MB of ram but you wont have all the features and also no graphic if you want x window my old machine was 32 MB of ram running red hat 6.2 was working well with x windows (kde)