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by mikepurvis 1909 days ago
Were you just using the browser/OS it came with, I guess like Windows 3.1 or 95?

Given their well-publicized insistence on building for a ton of obscure arches, I'd expect you could run modern Debian on such a machine no problem, with a modern web browser. Might be a little slow, especially if you stick with the original disk, but should be perfectly usable.

2 comments

> I'd expect you could run modern Debian on such a machine no problem...

Nope. Current builds of i386 Debian require a Pentium Pro or later -- I believe it's because they're compiled with the CMOV instruction, which wasn't present in the Pentium or earlier.

Ah, good point. Looks like Debian Jessie might have worked for it? In any case, distrowatch suggests a few others like Alpine and TinyCore that might have the proper support.
Yeah I had installed Windows 3.1 and tried IE and Netscape Navigator Gold.

Linux might be a whole other battle to get working but might be a fun project to attempt.

Try NetBSD with Lynx. OpenSSL will last several seconds, but it will work.