Anybody use Linux? For old hardware, which distro? [Setup]

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From: Baho Utot on 2 Jun 2010 18:41

From: John Hasler on 2 Jun 2010 19:20

Baho Utot writes:
> ...1995 PC that presently has an 8086 cpu with built in CGA graphics,
> 128k RAM upgraded from 64K, running Linux 2.6.18 kernel...

+5 funny.
--
John Hasler
jhasler(a)newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA

From: Jean-David Beyer on 2 Jun 2010 21:00

RayLopez99 wrote:
> Thinking of using on an old 1998 laptop PC that presently has a
> Pentium II, with a built in generic Dell modem, USB mouse, 512k RAM
> (!), DVD/CD, running Windows XP fine now (very slow), some distro of
> Linux.
>
> In another thread I got into a debate about what's the best distro for
> a simple new Acer machine ($300) that uses the Atom uP from Intel.
> But in this thread I just want to know if *any* Linux distro will work
> on such *old* hardware.
>
> The target user's needs are VERY minimal. Very very very. Here is
> what she needs:
>
> dial-up modem for internet access. Mouse. Maybe a printer (maybe
> not). Support at *any* resolution for the Dell graphics card (forget
> the name--it's pretty generic though). No need for an email client--
> she keeps all her emails at Yahoo, all her docs at Google apps, etc.
> Everything online. No need for sound. The machine has USB but this
> girl does not even know what a memory stick is. So only the USB mouse
> matters.
>
> Anybody think I can use Linux on this old setup, and, if which one?
> Not even a 'best' OS --just one that will last five years or so and
> allow surfing the net and maybe printing a document on a printer
> locally?
>
> RL

I am running CentOS 4 on a 10 year old box that has dual 550MHz Pentium
III processors, 512 MegaBytes RAM. It had a floppy disk drive and a
dial-up modem in it (though I have since removed them. It has an 80
GTByte 7200 rpm EIDE hard drive and two 9 GByte 10,000 rpm SCSI hard
drives in it. It has a USB printer and a SCSI CD-ROM burner. A Matrox
G200 (?) video card, and a bottom of the line Soundblaster card in it.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 20:55:01 up 27 days, 4:50, 3 users, load average: 4.85, 4.67, 4.50

From: Aragorn on 3 Jun 2010 00:38

On Thursday 03 June 2010 00:41 in comp.os.linux.setup, somebody
identifying as Baho Utot wrote...

> RayLopez99 wrote:
>
>> Thinking of using on an old 1998 laptop PC that presently has a
>> Pentium II, with a built in generic Dell modem, USB mouse, 512k RAM
>> (!), DVD/CD, running Windows XP fine now (very slow), some distro of
>> Linux.
>>
>> In another thread I got into a debate about what's the best distro
>> for a simple new Acer machine ($300) that uses the Atom uP from
>> Intel. But in this thread I just want to know if *any* Linux distro
>> will work on such *old* hardware.
>
> Thinking of using an old 1995 PC that presently has an 8086 cpu with
> built in CGA graphics, 128k RAM upgraded from 64K, running Linux
> 2.6.18 kernel with all the trimmings. [...]

I'm quite curious how you could get Linux to run on an 8086 CPU, or are
you talking of a subset of the Linux kernel designed for embedded
systems with such a processor?

Last time I checked, Linux requires at minimum an i386-compatible
processor in order to use the kernel for anything other than an
embedded system that runs only a subset of the kernel code. Not even
an i286 will do because Linux is at minimum 32-bit - 31-bit on IBM
mainframes.

The 8086 doesn't have a protected mode, and hence, no ability to set up
pagetables or descriptor tables, and no privilege rings, and Linux
requires these. So in all honesty, how did you pull that off? (Unless
you were not being serious in that statement, which, given that you are
responding to a troll who's not capable of being serious himself, would
of course make sense.)

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

From: Keith Keller on 3 Jun 2010 01:27

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.setup.]

On 2010-06-03, Aragorn <aragorn(a)chatfactory.invalid> wrote:
> On Thursday 03 June 2010 00:41 in comp.os.linux.setup, somebody
> identifying as Baho Utot wrote...
>
>> Thinking of using an old 1995 PC that presently has an 8086 cpu with
>> built in CGA graphics, 128k RAM upgraded from 64K, running Linux
>> 2.6.18 kernel with all the trimmings. [...]

> The 8086 doesn't have a protected mode, and hence, no ability to set up
> pagetables or descriptor tables, and no privilege rings, and Linux
> requires these. So in all honesty, how did you pull that off? (Unless
> you were not being serious in that statement, which, given that you are
> responding to a troll who's not capable of being serious himself, would
> of course make sense.)

I suspect your parenthetical is accurate. Besides, the 386 chip had
been out for a few years in 1995. :) IIRC PCs based on the Pentium
chip were coming out at that point, though at my university we still had
faculty who refused to give up their IBM PCs. Ah, CGA! Those were the
days. Where's my walker?!?

--keith

--
kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
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