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Can You Install Linux On a 1993 PC? (yeokhengmeng.com)
Slashdot reader yeokm1 writes: The oldest x86 CPU that the Lnux kernel supports today is theoretically the 486. However is this theory actually true in practice? I decided to put this theory to the test in my project.
His site describes installing Gentoo Linux on an "ancient" IBM PS/1 Consultant 2133 19C (released in 1993), with 64MB SIMM-72 RAM. (Though to speed things up, he compiled that minimal version of Gentoo on a modern Thinkpad T430 released in 2012.) "Due to the age of the PC, the BIOS only supports booting from the floppy drive or internal HDD," so there was also some disk partitioning and kernel configuration. ("Must disable 64-bit kernel for obvious reasons!") A half-hour video shows that it takes almost 11 minutes just to boot up -- and five and a half minutes to shut down. "Despite the many roadblocks I faced, I was impressed by the level of support Linux has for ancient hardware like this."
And there's one more added bonus. "Given the age of the 486 (1989 technology), it does not support branch prediction... Ironically this makes it safe from the Meltdown and Spectre attacks."
His site describes installing Gentoo Linux on an "ancient" IBM PS/1 Consultant 2133 19C (released in 1993), with 64MB SIMM-72 RAM. (Though to speed things up, he compiled that minimal version of Gentoo on a modern Thinkpad T430 released in 2012.) "Due to the age of the PC, the BIOS only supports booting from the floppy drive or internal HDD," so there was also some disk partitioning and kernel configuration. ("Must disable 64-bit kernel for obvious reasons!") A half-hour video shows that it takes almost 11 minutes just to boot up -- and five and a half minutes to shut down. "Despite the many roadblocks I faced, I was impressed by the level of support Linux has for ancient hardware like this."
And there's one more added bonus. "Given the age of the 486 (1989 technology), it does not support branch prediction... Ironically this makes it safe from the Meltdown and Spectre attacks."
"Ironically this makes it safe from the Meltdown and Spectre attacks."
No, there's no irony there at all - not even in the manner "irony" gets misused sometimes.
#DeleteChrome
We used to say (back in the 486-era) how software of today is shit and how everything was flying on 286-es in assembler. And 8085s...
The software of that era had complete and utter shit for security, hardware support, ease of use, stability and graphics etc etc. sure it ran fast, your car would go faster too if you took out all the windows, airbags, seatbelts, the doors and panels, stripped out the seats, air con, reduced fuel tank size to 10% of current capacity, not many people though would say that the car was better and today's cars are shit because of everything they come with.
I don't think they are developers. They are typists that today's universities (and ms courseware) churn out by the truck-load. On their way to extinction...
Systemd is probably the cause of the slow boot time. I'd love to see a light weight modern OS like NetBSD tested. Probably boots 10x faster.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well, I hope you never have to retrieve a quarter-megapixel digital photo from your graduation ceremony off an ATA disk. Or an original LaTeX of your final year project, for example. Don't worry soon enough you won't have a cd reader anywhere around you and loads of burned cds...