[ale] linux on a 486

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Wandered Inn wrote:
> 
> I've been attempting to load linux on a challenging system.  It's a 486
> with 8 meg of ram.  Mandrake tells you up front to forget it, Red Hat
> will begin to boot, but a couple steps into the install process tells
> you you don't have enough memory.  I fell back on the tried and true
> Slackware which appears to work with limited systems.  In spite of the
> fact that the docs for 8.0 tell you the install requires 16 MB minimum.
> I figured I'd fire it up, create some extra swap and go with it.  Well,
> I get to the point where it's installing the devs package and, well it's
> still there two days later.  I can go to other virtual consoles and do
> limited stuff, but they begin to hang as well.  I could drop back to an
> earlier version of slack which I know has worked on this box in the
> past, but I'd like to go with latest greatest stuff if possible.
> 
> Anyone have any suggestions for other dists. that might fly with this
> limited box?

This is wild-eyed speculation, but I think you might have
better luck with a version of Slack that defaults to a 2.2-series
kernel, such as 7.1. The reason is that after reading the
linux-mm list religiously for the past few months, and poking
around extensively in the MM code, I have the distinct
impression that there are problems with the 2.4 VM code that
might result in all kinds of wacky behavior on really small
or really big machines.

This is mainly just a intuitive impression, but there have been
some definite problems with swap and VM I/O scheduling that
were only fixed (and even then, not necessarily) in very
recent kernels (2.7pre*). The 2.4 VM system is really still kind
of experimental, it seems.

I installed Slackware 2 on a 486/33 with 8MB, so there's one
that'll work fer sure :-)

-- Joe

> --
> Until later: Geoffrey           esoteric at denali.atlnet.com
> 
> "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds.
> The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit
> to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his
> intelligence." - Albert Einstein
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-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
2nd Lbl A + 1 = 2nd Pause 2nd Prt GTO 2 R/S
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