So, I have this old Pentium 166 box laying around, so I thought I'd stick Linux on it (of course). At first, I used DeLi Linux and it ran quite well. The problem is, the project changed directions, to ConnochaetOS. They took a more modern take on things, using kernel 2.6 and other modern applications. Most of the newer applications don't run quite well on an older box. So, after finding a mirror of a DeLi Linux that I cloned to a local server, I now had a working respository.
Then I found DeliCate; a new forked version of DeLi still running kernel 2.4 but with updated software! The transition was really easy, simply by adding a new repository and upgrading the installation. On the forums, there's tons of resources to get it configured. Most namely, the PKGBUILD thread where you can compile applications just by the PKGBUILD file.
I have an old ISA NE2000 network card in there that didn't work out of the box. So I add the ne module to /etc/rc.modules:
/sbin/depmod -a
/sbin/modprobe ne
Then the network card worked. I also removed net from /etc/rc.conf so the network didn't start on boot, making a faster bootup.
If you have a serial mouse (like I do), I had to configure X11 to see it. I configured it like so:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Microsoft"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
EndSection
You can run dmesg | grep tty to find your serial device. Other than that, everything is running quite smoothly, well as fast as a Pentium 166 with 64MB of RAM can run ;)