I’ve seen videos of people running Damn Small Linux with a GUI on Pentium 1s.
None of them are very recent, so I don’t know how well ‘modern’ DSL would fare on a P1, but there are a few recent videos of people browsing the web using Dillo on Pentium 3s.
I installed Debian Buster and ran Firefox on my Pentium 3 750 a couple of years ago. It wasn’t very fast or very usable, but I ran it.
I mostly use that system for retro games in DOS 6.2 and Windows 98. The Debian installation is my utility OS for when I want to transfer new stuff to the DOS partitions, because it’s way easier to connect it to the network.
I must still have a Pentium S with Windows 98 back at my mom’s house. Now I am wondering if it could run Linux.
If you’re not planning to run GUI
I’ve seen videos of people running Damn Small Linux with a GUI on Pentium 1s.
None of them are very recent, so I don’t know how well ‘modern’ DSL would fare on a P1, but there are a few recent videos of people browsing the web using Dillo on Pentium 3s.
I installed Debian Buster and ran Firefox on my Pentium 3 750 a couple of years ago. It wasn’t very fast or very usable, but I ran it.
I mostly use that system for retro games in DOS 6.2 and Windows 98. The Debian installation is my utility OS for when I want to transfer new stuff to the DOS partitions, because it’s way easier to connect it to the network.