Slashdot Mirror
Linux on Older Hardware
sparrow_hawk writes: "One of Linux's strengths has always been the wide variety of older/obsolete hardware it supports. However, most modern distributions seem to assume that the user has a brand-new machine with processor and RAM to spare. Linux Journal reports on the RULE project (Run Up2Date Linux Everywhere). They are trying to come up with a low-resource-requirement, easy-to-use Linux installation for use on older hardware, intended as an option when you install Red Hat Linux. The FAQ has more information."
While it is great that I can run Linux on my old packard smell 486sx[33mhz] w/ 4 megs of ram. I have often wondered if I'm loosing out on my high end servers because of this legacy compliance?
I admit, IANAKH, nor have I seen assembly code in over 6 years, but it seems to me that the kernel might be going out of it's way in some obscure (to me) way to support these platforms? Have CPUs not really changed all that much? Is one kernel source for all CPUs the best approach?
I understand that their are compiler options applicable depnding on your CPU, but is their legacy code that could be removed to make a leaner, meaner, faster(?) kernel?
Interesting that this was posted tonight -- today I was poking around my parents' basement (aka, "Free Storage for Me," or in German, "Krappenhaus"), and I discovered a wealth of old equipment I'd...um...creatively obtained from my high school and various jobs over the years:
The only problem is deciding whether or not I want to turn it into a Linux box (SOHO firewall, anyone?), or take advantage of all those classic games by installing FreeDOS.
Damn you Slashdot. Who would have thought that you could have too many choices for using a 486?
They that would sacrifice their
...Linux kinda NEEDS to run on old kit, and run reasonably well. By "well", I mean at least as snappy as whatever OS is actually designed to run on the thing, to an extent. I wouldn't expext X to be as snappy on a Quadra 650 as MacOS 7.6.1 (hell, it's not all that snappy on a G3).... but I'd like the draw rate to be measured in FPS instead of blinks of the eye.
I bring the Quadra up for good reason- I'm a Mac user. (stop laughing, and read.) I don't have a system that runs MacOS X well enough for my needs (this include my G4/733 at work, to be blunt... it's a slug compared to "classic" MOS). My home systems and my work systems are all task dedicated.... but I have that Quadra to mess around on.
Old hardware can be had for VERY cheap. And it's a BITCH to find an old OS for old hardware (want to run A/UX as your firewall? Good luck.....). Linux and BSD offer an excellent opportunity to run a production-grade OS on outdated consumer-grade hardware. A lot of both respective systems will run acceptably on just about everything... until you hit the GUI- at which point it seems to be an ordeal similar to that of amatuer web designers... you know, the cats that don't even have Netscape installed and don't even bother to test in the browser revision below whatever they're using now. It seems to me that a lot of OSS programmers whose work is getting into Gnome, KDE, and other graphics-intensive areas of a Linux-based OS are designing ON modern hardware FOR modern hardware. They don't seem to realize that not everyone - particularly those who could benefit the MOST from their work- has access to or owns modern hardware. And of those that DO... not all of them are willing to SPARE that modern hardware for the weeks/months of the learning experience.
Old hardware is cheap... I'd LOVE to see OSS programmers approach their hobby/love/job the way GOOD Web designers do- test early, test often, test on hardware, connections, and media that's at least a revision older than what you're using to code. It's effort- something not a lot of people are into- but you want to see your widget run as smoothly on mom's Pentium 100 as it does on your G4, right?
But - I succeeded!
This poor box, with all of 16 megs RAM (and a kick-ass swap file!) is now running:
- A CircleMUD-based MUD (telnet klomdark.servebeer.com port 4000)
- A Citadel BBS (telnet to klomdark.servebeer.com)
- Apache (With some cool stuff listed here...)
- A Mailserver (both SMTP and POP3) (Email me...)
It CAN be done, but this distribution would have sure come in handy! But, an old copy of RedHat 7.0/i386 worked just fine, once I actually located an ISA network card that it knew how to deal with :) )
Insane installation - took nearly 16 hours to install it. Nearly 4 hours to compile Apache. Probably 8 hours to compile Citadel, and another 8 to compile CircleMUD. (I would have thought Apache would take the longest...)
"Older machines generally run cooler than the newest Athlons and P4's."
Dur. Just underclock the newer Athlons and P4s and they will run cooler!
I am into the copy and paste.
Isn't this another reason why source-based distros like Gentoo or Sorcerer should be given more consideration?
Surely a distro that compiles to your specific hardware during installation would solve this problem.
Or am I missing something extremely important?
Personally I just want to see an easy to find "Bare Minimum Install" option. I know the technology is there. You can set up an auto-install script that does a bare minimum install. Why can't they make a checkbox in the install process that does that?
When setting up a secure machine for a server it is best to start with nothing and add just enough to make it work.
Coding Blog
Slackware8.0 will run on anything that the kernel will run. getting linux on a 386 is childs play and takes ZERO effort if you use the correct distro.
Hell I have linux running on a robot prototype that is a 386 computer with 16 meg ram (too much ram really) and a 4mb flash card in an ide converter. and I have a citadel touchscreen that has way less than that running linux as a nice touchscreen interface to my hot-tub mp3 player.
Linux on super low end hardware is not hard by any means. REDHAT on super low end hardware, that's antoher story... it's hard to strip out the bloat that redhat forces on install.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.