I heard that RedHat 5.0 is the
smallest Linux that fits into Libretto 50CT and I had a full fledged
RedHat 5.0 distribution with boot floopy disks, cdroms and the book. So
I went for it.
My Libretto 50CT had an external
floppy drive and an external CD-ROM drive connected through PCMCIA.
Libretto
can boot either from hard disk or floppy drive but not from the CD-ROM
drive. RedHat
5.0 has the PCMCIA connection utilities on the second floppy disk. So
one can not
continue the installation process through what Libretto allows and
RedHat installation provides. Installing through the PLIP is the
one solution [1] one can use. Another solution, having both Windows and
RedHat 5.0 partitions on the disk is explained in [2] although I am not
sure if Libretto 50's 800MB hard disk can accomodate both.
I had a more direct approach. I took the harddrive of the Libretto
out, attached it on a Linux box as the primary hard disk and installed
RedHat 5.0 on the the Libretto's tiny hard disk.
Configuration of the X server
The remaining part was configuration of the X, which I managed through
[1,2] and Vaughan Pratt's XF86Config files. One very important thing is
that calling 'Xmetro' directly does not work. You should
use 'startx' to start the X server which runs Xmetro.
The
X configuration file which you may find
useful. It should be under /etc/X11.
Adding PCMCIA support
Now we have a nicely running Linux but communication with the outer
world requires PCMCIA connection to work. First one has the start the
cardmanager, 'cardmgr'. This deamon writes messages to
/var/log/messages when the PCMCIA card is plugged into the Libretto's
PCMCIA slot.