In a message dated 7/4/2006 8:33:50 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
mike.l.schwartz@gmail.com writes:
My first few years accessing the Aztec Free-Net, 
from home I used a dial-up connection from an old 
DOS machine with a 286 and ONE mb of RAM.
(1024 KB).
I think it was too small for even the relatively smaller
WINdows in those days (3.1 say), and I am not sure
whether it could have run Gnu/Linux (I never tried).
286s cannot run regular Linux systems.  ELKS represents an 8086-compatible 
Linux-alike though, and you can run Minix.  My first Unix system was a 286-16, 
1Mb memory, and Minix 2.0.

Even 386s strain with modern distributions (I tried X11 once on a 386DX-40 :/)