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Modern Linux Distribution for (Very) Old Computers
macemoneta writes "The blueflops floppy-based distribution may be just what many Slashdot users are looking for, to revive old hardware. This is a 2.6.11-7 kernel based tiny distribution, that runs very well on my ancient 486sx25 with just 8MB of RAM. It's text-mode only, at the moment, but it does support hard drive installation, and includes an ssh2 client (dropbear)! Many distributions have moved away from boot floppy support, indicating that the 2.6 kernel is just too big. This distribution proves that where there's a will, there's a way."
This is my first post on Slashdot , and it seems to be really a First Post ! Am I the only one to have achieved this ? On the other hand , this is good news , because I have a friend with a 486 , who wants to use it as a toy , but cannot , becuase no modern OS can run on it .
OK so X would be nice, but we can still use those old boxes as SSH clients.
Nethack, anyone?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
NetBSD works just as good on a 3.2Mb ram i386.
They proabably had to apply the -tiny series of 2.6 kernel patches for embedded systems.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Could you run a cluster of these ? Because the only way that hardware of that level would be useful in any serious ( not router/firewall/fileserver etc. ) application would be to make it run clustered - and make it run well . Remember that you cannot make a system of one smart server , many dumb , OS-less clusters if you do not have the server in the first place .
A real use for this (if it is possible) is to configure a lot of older hardware into a cluster for cheap cluster computing. I've thought of this a couple of times, and besides the power issues, and the fact that using old obsolete hardware has its own obstacles, if you have the hardware, its perhaps possible to create a couple of racks of clustered computers. I think that being able to use two or more old motherboards per power supply would help make it more realistic. It is indeed interesting to think that in garages across the world, there could be some serious clusters built on cheap hardware. Serious, in this case, does not mean that they will ever be in contention with deepblue, but it would perhaps speak volumes to the people at SETI? Seriously, if you could do this with 12 old pentiums, would it not pave the way to do it with higher processors but keep the OS overheads very low?
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Why do people waste their time writing software for a 486? Spend $300 and get a new entry-level PC -- and with the time you saved, do something useful.
If he dropped VFAT, he could add EXT2 and get some space back for other uses.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Three hundred dollars (or local equivalent) is a lot of money to some people. Like eg: very poor people in the third world. The ability to run modern-but-simple productivity apps (and write their own) on seriously antiquated hardware might well make their day. Sort of "simputer" ad hoc. Not to mention, Linux skills might well be worth serious (local) money.
Where's the Linux distro that turns an old machine into something useful like a kiosk with a webbrowser?
I've kept as much old hardware as anyone here, but honestly I'm sitting here looking at a P100 and wondering what it's still good for. A buddy of mine just threw away (in the dumpster) a bunch of running 300Mhz machines. I really can't blame him. Putting a "text only" linux distro on them isn't at all useful.
I can re-purpose old machines as firewalls and routers all day long (no one cares if those are text-only,) but even that's getting to be a waste of time when I can buy a nice tiny new mini-atx box for $200.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Accessing the Internet is also possible with a 486; no, you're not going to run the latest browser with your Flash animations and Java applets and beautiful CSS stylesheets and the like, but they're adequate for viewing text-based sites,
Not just text-based sites, either. The Dillo browser runs great even on a 486, probably even with only 16M of RAM, and renders most sites quite well. It doesn't support plugins like flash or java of course, but still makes for a useful web browsing experience.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Okay, I don't need any dumb terminals. I don't need computers. I can get everything I need on 10 acres of land: food, clothing, shelter, and even raise offspring on it. (If I can find a girl willing to breed with an uneducated guy who lives in a one room cabin)
I want more though. I having like the ability to read. I like lights that come on with just a flick of a switch. I like getting fresh fish and vegetables flown in, in the middle of winter. I like heat that I don't need to tend myself. I like Air Conditioning on those really hot days.
Happy? I have just admitted that I don't need most of what I have, and I don't have what it takes to get what I really need on my own.
I want some real dumb terminals. I think an old dumb terminal where everything is printed on paper would be perfect for one corner of the living room. (Perhaps a Ms. PacMan game in the other) Even though I rarely use my Sun3 systems I like having them around.
Sorry, but the math doesn't add up. Back when distributed.net was first starting on RC56 I calculated that the cost of electricity to run enough 386s to equal one Pentium pro-200 (Then the fastest chip at the task and you paid for that power) was greater than the cost of the ppro-200 system! I haven't since done the calculations for modern systems, but it still applies.
That is for a task that scales well to multiple CPUs. Most computer tasks do not scale well to multiprocessor systems. So in the real world those old systems are worth even less.
I downloaded it and tried it out awhile back. Works Great! Definetly the ticket for older hardware. Biggest problem I had was actually finding clean good floppies to burn the images to, had to go through a pile of them to get any that would work. After that though, fast boot, got online easy, surfed well.
It might earn you geek points by doing up the 2.6 kernel to create a floppy bootable solution but whats the point?
There are many well tested and feature rich solutions out there that it really just seems like re-inventing the wheel.
http://people.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd.html
http://lrp.steinkuehler.net/
When did a 486 become "very old" hardware? I figured this was about old VAXen or HP-Apollo or AT&T Unix PCs. Not about a 486 sx from the mid 90's.
Damn Small Linux (knoppix based 50Mb d/l
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
Puppy Linux (about 100MB)
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/
both have GUI , Puppy has Firefox and dillo
both will run on just about anything
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
yah i know is not with kernel 2.6.x
Apache+php started on it ! -
It's little slow compared with other old hardware i have (k6-2@500mhz)
Is way faster than my very old amd 386sx (woody worked on that too !)
I wonder how to install woody under 4M (another pc)
maybe with Linux-tiny will work
http://www.selenic.com/tiny-about/
developer http://flamerobin.org
There are tons of embedded systems. Many of them run moderns equivalents of older PC CPUs. The instruction set stays the same but the chip is fabricated using modern methods resulting in smaller size and lower power consumption.
Hi,
I had a similar project with some AST laptops, I got five in Escondido (east of San Diego) for about 50$ and frankensteined the parts together into three working laptops. They were all 486-DX33's with 500MB-800MB hard-drives. I removed the laptop drives, used a laptopIDE-regularIDE adaptor ($5 or $5.95 at Frys) to connect it onto my 400MHz redhad machine and copied over a small version of slackware onto it.
I booted it up and after approximately ten minutes, I had 6 tty consoles up running slackware with the 2.4.something kernel. I can't remember the bogomips number from dmesg off the top of my head (the laptops are in storage in santee while I'm on the east coast on some contract work) but I was able to run some of my bench-mark work and custom c-code on there.
It was a great low-low power terminal to use and really quiet when the HD spun down.
The other bonus with 486-33's is their low power consumption and no need for a cooling fan to run. It's almost as quiet as running my apple 5300c laptop. The apple is cooler in that even clicking most menu and system items does NOT spin up the hard drive. Enough of the first level of interaction menu components are cached in memory, I guess, and there is no need to spin up the HD to switch context betweeen programs that are already up and running.
Kris
Not for raw power mind you but for a learning experience.
If you want to play with clusters, mirroring, or even things like heartbeat a cluster of old cheap systems can be worth setting up. Not for production mind you but for a learning environment.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Yup yer right Tim! I've been looking for linux to run on my old compaq 486 laptop. Thought it would be a good way to mess with linux and not screw-up my other machine that run suse.. Thanks for the heads up on this one and will download and check it out..