The Aptiva was a line of home personal computers that introduced sometime in the mid-1990s. It was a solid line but faced stiff competition from other big-name brands as well as the white box vendors. IBM eventually dropped the Aptiva when it shifted away from the home market. These days, you can find these machines in second-hand computer shops going for under P6,000 for a complete set.

Finding myself with some time during my extended stay in Davao, I decided to resurrect this old machine. I plugged it in, and surprise! surprise! it still booted into LILO to let me choose between Windows 95 / Red Hat 6.2. However, given my present requirements, the apps simply wouldn't take anymore. I opted to reinstall a newer version of Linux, of course.

Now, what version of Linux could possibly load into a Pentium 200-MMX machine with 32MB of RAM? I first attempted my favorite LiveCD, Slax, but it turns out I couldn't even boot it since it used the newer isolinux system. Besides, it needed 32MB minimum to boot without the GUI.

A little research here and there, and finally, I rediscover D*mn Small Linux (forgive the mild expletive, that's really the name of the distro).

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