non bloated operating system

[ohGrFreak]

I have RMA'd my western digital harddrive and I took the biggest harddrive from one of my ancient computers to put in it's place until it gets sent back. Now, my biggest old drive is 512 megs, LOL, it had windows 98 on it until I deleted the partition.

I am now looking to buy a windows OS that will be able to install on such a small drive. I have been googling for a while and can't find a place to purchase old OS's like 95 and 98, and I don't know if it's even legal.

Since I can't find any windows OS's so far, I have found and am downloading minislack 1.1 Linux since it's less than 400 megs, but I have never used anything other than windows.

I am asking opinions on where to buy old windows versions and if it's even legal, and I'm asking how easy minislack would be to operate. This is just a temp solution until I get my 250 gig drive back and install XP on it.

Side note, you may be wondering why I just didn't put 98 back on the drive, it was a hand me down comp that didn't come with the OS disc.

 

[Tyler1989]

Thats correct you cannot buy 95 98 ME anymore. Even Win95 is 500 megs and I would not call that bloated but you can buy windows embeded which I think should fit on a USB drive (ie 128 megs) Or you can buy MSDN Pro to get legal 95-ME CDs or even 3.1 if you want.

If you trully want Linux get damn small linux it's got a small size of 128 megs.

 

[ohGrFreak]

yeah, I really didn't mean bloated, just bigger than 512 megs.

can you tell me more about windows embedded?

i'll do a search for damn small linux, and is that the real name of it?

thnx for the help

 

[Tyler1989]

You bet google "DSL linux" or "damn small linux", a word of advice if you get DSL Linux is to make sure you get the correct series one series is ONLY for installing on USB pen or flash device the other series is for installing to a harddrive.

Windows embeded is ment to be used through a flash device but I see no reason why it cannot run from a hard drive (very expensive).
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/

 

[Jorsoft]

Non-bloated OS? DOS man lol!

 

[macdude425]

Yes, that's DOS. Unbloated.

You could always try http://freedos.org

 

[ohGrFreak]

thanks for all the input guys (and maybe gals). i decided to keep searching for a small linux (a FREE small linux). since this is a temp solution, i was hoping only to spend up to 30 bucks. and, if i can't find a small enough OS for that, i can always keep using my backup computers, but my out-of-service computer is my baby

 

[furtivefelon]

i believe a good distro will give you about 300 mb of used space, allowing you to do normal stuff such as web surfing, text processing and other stuff.. i don't know about ubuntu (i usually install everything, all 5 gig of it), but i'm sure you can make it dance on 512mb

 

[Jorsoft]

There is a mini version of Windows 3.1, 95, and 98. I don't remember what page they were on, but I know they do exist.

 

[Tyler1989]

Did I not menton damn small linux it's 128 megs installs to the hd and can do anything any other linux can.