Linux On Older Hardware 379
Joe Barr writes "Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier has put together a substantive report on how well Linux runs on older hardware. Are you surprised to learn that the belch of smoke and FUD out of Redmond on the topic last month isn't true? As Zonker shows, 'The bottom line: Linux is still quite suitable for older hardware. It might not turn your aging PC into a powerhouse, but it will extend its lifespan considerably.' NewsForge, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG."
Why not paste the real link? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not paste the real link? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why not paste the real link? (Score:3, Interesting)
hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
386/33 with Unix SVR4 and X10.? worked just fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hmmm (Score:2)
It doesn't have to take up the entire garage just because it's old. I've heard a Rumor. There's something out there called a pencil. It's got loads of features, just like modern computers. You can write letters, draw graphics, shew on the end of it and there's numerous other applications. I've also heard it's very small, light-weight and most importantly, portable.
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Funny)
Re:hmmm (Score:2)
I finaly retired the old 386 SAMBA server. The BIOS was quite limited on the size of the hard drive that could be installed and the first partition was severly limited in size. Maybe I'll use the old SAMBA box for Apachie on the intranet.
I bought a NAS box. It runs Linux. It uses the Reiser file
Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
I've got some PII class notebooks running Windows 2000 just wonderfully, even in ~128M memory.
Honestly, I don't see upgrading in the next year. All I've done is expand drive space, I put three monitors on this machine, it all works great.
So.. maybe try reinstalling on those old PCs and slobbing in some new memory, and save a few bucks?
My linux boxes, to their credit, haven't needed touching since I installed them - they just work, and in fact, I'm not even sure how they're configured anymore. They're running on P100 class hardware as described in the article.
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
Win2k never did that kinda crap and it means whenever I forget to close a search window in XP, the CPU maxes out when the files change around.
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
The only feature I miss is remote desktop, and that's only of marginal utility.
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:4, Informative)
That's the most important reason why to install Server 2003 or XP. Once you start using it, it changes the way you work with Windows machines.
I suggest trying to find a copy of Server 2000 so at least you get Terminal Services (with unlimited connections in Per-User mode!). If you're too poor to spring for it, or don't trust P2P, you should try to find NTSwitch.exe... and follow these instructions:
Once you verify that Terminal Services is running and installed, you can revert the machine to Professional (or keep it at Server if you find it useful).
Seeing a 2K professional machine running multiple Terminal Services sessions without protest is a clear indication that the Server vs. Workstation distinction is only for market segmentation and maximizing profit, not any technical/support reason.
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the most important reason why to install Server 2003 or XP. Once you start using it, it changes the way you work with Windows machines.
Hopefully Vista will really get a decent shell interface, *and* all of the important system functionality will become available through that interface (I'm not holding my breath on that last, though), and then you'll *really* change the way you work with Windows machines. The remote GUI access is okay, but it only works when you have a high-bandwidth connection, and scriptability is very poor.
(Now we get to the *real* point of this post, which is just to share a little Linux anecdote and do a little chest thumping ;-) ). As an example of what you can do with a good remote shell, consider my experience from yesterday:
I'm in a hotel room in Paris, France. My wife was at her mother's house in Morgan, Utah, USA and sent me a message via Jabber. She had to get some pictures off of her nephew's digital camera so that she can incorporate them into a slideshow she's putting together for his wedding. He brought the CD that came with the camera, and she installed the software (on her iBook) and tried to download the pictures. Nothing happened. The computer didn't even seem to see that attached camera. We IMed back and forth for a while, trying to troubleshoot the problem, but it was no good. Looking at the camera's support web site, it appears that maybe my wife needs to download a newer version of the software, but it's 40MB and she's on a slow dialup line (my father in law is out in the sticks and even his telephone service isn't very good -- he rarely gets connected at better than 26Kbps). Actually, as it turned out, even after she upgraded the software (at home on a cable modem connection), she still couldn't talk to the camera. Dunno.
Now, a while back, I gave my father in law a computer... an old AMD K6 300Mhz running Ubuntu Linux (Hoary, as I recall). It lets him browse e-Bay, send and receive e-mail and write the occasional letter and I don't have to support it at all -- it just works. So, I told my wife to go attach the camera to the Linux box. One little complication was that both the Linux box and my wife's iBook are connected via WiFi to a little AP/router with a dialup modem in it. That's because my father-in-law had no way to get a phone line into the room where he wanted to keep the computer (it's an old house). The AP/router, of course, does NAT. Not a major problem... I just told my wife to type "ssh -R5000:localhost:22 ..." on the Ubuntu box to connect to my server at home and set up a tunnel back to the Ubuntu box.
Then, from my hotel room in France, I connected first to my home server, then logged into the Ubuntu box. Damn... gphoto2 wasn't installed. "aptitude install gphoto2", plus a three-minute wait for the 233KB download to finish (yes, barely over 1KB per second -- it's a *slow* dialup) and I had the software. "gphoto2 -P" detected the camera, identified it, connected to it with the correct protocol and downloaded all of the pictures from the camera. "nmap" found the IP address of my wife's iBook and "scp" quickly copied all of the pictures into her home directory.
That's it. Problem solved... I looked like some kind of a wizard for being able to do this from 1/3 of the way around the planet, but the truth is that it's no different than doing it from the console. I suppose perhaps someday all Internet connections will be fast enough that you can always use a remote GUI, but that day has not yet arrived, and won't for some years yet.
A good CLI rocks.
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
6 months after the Y2K 'bug' forced some people to upgrade older hardware, we in Australia got a VAT based tax system (we called it GST, because we're idiots) which replaced to some extent the previous 'sales tax' based system. These two events meant that we saw quite a bump in sales that year, and it was interesting to observe a slight bump 3 yea
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
This would have been pretty high-end hardware when Windows 2000 came out. I ran it as my day-to-day OS on a Pentium-133, and even that isn't all that impressive.
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
The original Pentium 4, codenamed "Willamette", ran at 1.4 and 1.5 GHz and was released in November 2000 on the Socket 423 platform.
The Pentium III is an x86 (more precisely, an i686) architecture microprocessor by Intel, introduced on February 26, 1999.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_III [wikipedia.org]
In short, when 2k came o
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:3, Interesting)
Up to this past year, I had a 13 year old Sun workstation serving as the firewall for my home network, running a very recent version of OpenBSD (50MHz SPARC handles DSL bandwidth very nicely:). Even Solaris won't install on these machines, any longer (perhaps Solaris 2.7, but I'm not sure).
Truly one of the "value added" features of the F/OSS operating systems.
Just curious... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
So, what you're trying to say is that you have a 3 year old computer r
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2, Interesting)
But back to the topic at hand: old hardware. The hardware you mentioned isn't that old.
I have made routers out of Pentium 133mhz machines with 16mb of ram, using linux. That's where the real value in old hardware is - simple tasks. The nice thing about those older
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
i'm tired but my point is that a 3 year old machine isn't that old at all even for a gaming computer for media it should perform flawlessly and office work (unless you
Re:Verus older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
If cost is the reason, then I have no argument with your reasoning.
If cost is not the reason, you are cheating yourself by not moving to XP, even on older hardware, as well as new hardware, XP is faster, and offers a lot of little things that are nice.
There is also significant differences in compatibility, the kernel, and how things
Well sure, it's great (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well sure, it's great (Score:2, Informative)
Windows 2000 (Score:2)
Computer/Processor 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU.
Memory At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM; more memory generally improves responsiveness.
Hard Disk 2 GB with 650 MB free space.
CPU Support Windows 2000 Professional supports single and dual CPU systems.
Drive CD-ROM or DVD drive.
Display VGA or higher resolution monitor.
Keyboard Required.
Re:Windows 2000 (Score:2)
Re:Windows 2000 (Score:2)
Granted, it would be nice if they had an option in the installer to install with all that crap turned off.
MS Office (Score:2)
Re:MS Office (Score:2)
Office 2000? (Score:2)
If you want to pull ancient stuff out of a box, try Star Office 5.x for size, speed and features. It compares very well with the M$ Office that was out when it was produced.
If you want modern software, most of the functionality of Office can be found in DSL, that's why it's so amazing that it all fits in 50 MB. KDE's office suite has most of the same functionality with a much smaller footprint and others make even nicer programs. Abbiword and Kword are bo
I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) What's the point of this article? Linux worked on these machines when they were state of the art. Is it such a revelation that it still works on these machines?
2) Would Microsoft suggest that Linux is less suitable for a computer with 4 mb of video ram than a copy of Windows Vista or XP? The DRM alone would sap the system's resources.
3) I know that Slashdot's parent company owns newsforge, but would it have been hard to put in a direct link to the article? Here it is: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/02/13/1854
4) Geeks can now smile that yes, in deed, their operating system runs on old computers. OK, now what? What's the significance? Is it that people won't have to upgrade? Is it that they can keep their old boxes around? Surely if they still had them, they would know this already. And it won't make Windows users want to switch as they are all running their apps on shiny new(er) boxes anyway.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
The issue is that a previous study [slashdot.org] conducted by Microsoft claimed that Linux wasn't so great on old hardware. That study
Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, the system thankfully IS working nicely with all the old machines I've tried it on. But there's still the possibility that it relies on some more modern features. There have not been ground shaking steps since the 386 (compared to the leap that came from 286 to 386), but some subtle changes happened. What if the kernel needed certain CPU Operations? What if the system expects to have at least 64 megs of ram? What if it expects a graphics adapter that can at least run VESA standard (ok, unlikely with Linux, but still...)?
All matters that could keep a system from running on old hardware.
Then there's distributions. What if the distribution compilers expect you to be able to run X, and run it at at least 800x600 resolution? What if they don't provide a text based installation routine? What if they expect at least PS/2 mice and won't accept serial? What about proprietary CD-Rom drivers, standards developed kinda late in that area? Not to mention the graphics headaches before VESA. Or if they require at least 64 megs for their ramdisk image they want to install from?
The reasons are numerous. So I'm kinda glad someone took the burden to actually try that. I envy that guy for the time he has at hand to spend on something like this (must've taken weeks to test it through on old hardware).
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
I don't think it took weeks to test Linux on a Pentium II. I am currently running an old 486-25MHz 16 MB RAM 325MB disk + 500MB disk, ISA only I own since 1993. It is running 24/7 for years now. I am also running a Pentium 166, 64MB RAM and 1 GB HD also 24/7. I have old Fujitsu laptop Pentium 1
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
I mean, compare heatsinks then and now. I remember having a fan on my 486 (which was kinda new back then, until then it was passive heatsinks only) that could maybe work as the northbridge fan on a current mainboard. When do you need big heatsinks that weigh more than the mainboard? When you have enough
"Linux" can mean many things (Score:3, Insightful)
So of course it can run, and run well, on older hardware. The only question is what you have to give up to make it work well.
Huh? (Score:2)
You mispelled "Knoppix".
What about older versions of Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
All true, but: (Score:2)
Granted, if you're not modifying your hardware anymore, that won't matter.
But there are other things. Security and bugfixes being the main ones (you will not get
Re:All true, but: (Score:2, Informative)
On one system I have LinkSys NC100 cards which Win98SE doesn't ship with drivers for. I have the floppies but, trouble is, the FDD is crapped (come to find out the floppies are dead, too). I had to boot back to Debian to fetch the drivers. Once connected, windowsupdate.microsoft.com had no problems sending all of the updates from the original CD
Re:What about older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
Re:What about older versions of Windows? (Score:2)
I agree. My wire got a new computer with XP Home to replace a box that became a hand-me-down to one of the kids. The XP box had a bigger hard drive. We decided to configure some shared folders the same way as the Windows 98 box. We found out very quickly that is not possible. To protect shared folders on the Windows 98 box we had set the permission to Read Only. (media files) so the kids don't mess with them but can play them.
Re:What about older versions of Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
No. People were saying, non-stop, how great Win98 was when ME came around. I'd say, at it's peak, it was VASTLY over-rated. Although much smaller and somewhat faster, it isn't a fraction as stable as 2000 or XP.
The most underrated Microsoft operating system is NT4... Smaller and faster than 98, and every bit as stable as 2000 or XP.
NT4 got lots of bad publicity for being a version behind 95/98 in DirectX versions, and sadly only got up to DirectX 6.0 before being E.O.L.ed. It also got a bad wrap for lacking USB support, even though several companies released NT4 drivers for their USB devices, USB input devices like keyboards and mice don't need OS support, and a third-party company is still selling the USB stack/drivers for NT4 for $30. These were features Microsoft was holding back on, to force an upgrade to 2000.
NT4 was great, in it's stability and simplicity. It was frustrating to see a blue-screen when you swapped a videocard, but it only took a little bit of knowledge to solve the problem, and be back to 100% in no time. Repeatability is amazing, unlike 95/98/2000/XP which may install the drivers for a device once, then won't the second time, NT4 was, at the very least, completely consistent.
I can't comment on XP, but I do remember that Windows 2003 (the server version of XP) had the option of completely disabling the pagefile, which made it just noticably faster, in only a few very specific cases.
Why almost? Each successive version of Windows IS designed to slow down your computer. My favorite example is the "Open With..." dialog. It hasn't changed the slightest bit since Windows 95, but it gets SIGNIFICANTLY slower with each release. As in, outpacing hardware improvements... I can only imagine it's because they're making the registry slower and vastly more bloated with each release (perhaps they throw a few sleep() calls in there to make Dell/HP happy).
Also, there is one huge reason I would suggest M.E. over 98... UMASS support. People REALLY don't want to go to the web and have to download a driver for every single USB device they use. Without UMASS support, you can't just plug-in a USB hard drive, flash dongle, iPod, etc. and have it work. With ME and 2000 being the first versions of Windows with UMASS support, is it any wonder most knowledgable people (myself included) recomend 2000 over all other versions of Windows?
The thought of engineered obsolesence still makes me gag. I'd much rather have Linux/BSD, where things like USB and UMASS support aren't intentionally held back, and you can always backport any newer features you want.
NT4 (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with the poster about NT4.
I ran NT4 w/SP6 on a 120mhz with 64mb of RAM and it was very snappy. Even cutting down to 32mb of RAM didn't slow it down all that much. Office-97 ran very snappy on this system also.
Linux with X-Window, and similar features would be ridiculously slow on the same hardware.
Scalability is the reason (Score:2)
Now, one could argue that the Systems that come to us from the lovely town of Redmo
Windows 2003 (Score:3, Interesting)
- 133mhz processor
- 128mb of ram
- 1.25gb+ of hard drive space
From memory, that's a computer in the early 90's with some extra memory and a bigger hard drive, neither of which are anywhere near expensive.
It's no surprise that other server operating systems run on old hardware as well.
It's no surprise that Linux will run on older hardware,
Re:good luck (Score:2)
i am setting it up with as much lightweight software as i can. AIM version 1.0 from oldversion.com offbyOne web browser to offer tabbed browsing with no javascript and IE 5.5 to handle anything that requires scripting and crap. i will probably go looking for the lightest IRC client i can find tomorrow and install notepad++.
windows can be set up to run on older hardware if you really
Non-CD Booting Options and Distro Support (Score:4, Informative)
Machines that have to boot from floppy or HD are old, and laptops with random pre-Cardbus PCMCIA Ethernet cards are old, and working with them requires distro support for booting from floppy into a system with the right Ethernet drivers and/or support for booting from MS-DOS file systems that you loaded before the first Linux boot. Many of the distros out there _could_ do it, but don't necessarily give you the documentation to figure out how :-)
One trick I'm planning to try soon is putting the laptop disk into an external USB shoebox so I can load it from one of my larger computers, side-stepping the whole problem. That still requires a sufficiently small distro, but at least it's a start.
Re:Non-CD Booting Options and Distro Support (Score:2, Informative)
"Old" is relative, but keep in mind that machines that can boot from CDROM and support USB have been around for nearly 10 years now (I bought just such a machine back in January 97, 9 years ago). A decade-old machine fits my definition of "old". Certainly machines based on a 386 or 486 CPU are older, but a p200 from 96-97 is definitely "old".
No surprise there (Score:3, Interesting)
I put Gentoo and fluxbox on it (cross-compiling the binaries on my desktop - I am not a moron), opera, abiword, gnumeric, mplayer, and even the MythTV frontend, so I can watch shows in bed. It runs really quite snappy, and seems more responsive than my Dad's 1.2GHz celeron running XP.
My brother-in-law is quite suprised that I've been able to breath new life into a computer he was told was a junker. He meanwhile has a 1GHz PIII notebook that he is thinking of again replacing because Windows runs too slow.
Re:No surprise there (Score:2)
What happened to the good old days? (Score:2)
Now there's actually some FUD that Windows runs better on old hardware? Why is there even a debate at all? Has Windows gotten that much faster? Has Linux gotten that much slower? Has X11/Qt/GTK gotten that much more bloated?
You missed the memo. There's really no contest. (Score:2)
Amazing someone would say something so stupid [eweek.com], isn't it? They pretended that distributions made for older hardware don't exist and removed XP's built in hardware install blocks to discover that, "If Linux was installed on an older system, such as an average PC of 1997, then the desktop performance falls below what is typically acceptable for a common user" and, "that Windows performed as well as Linux
Re:You missed the memo. There's really no contest. (Score:2)
It outright refused to install on PII and lead people to throw out lesser hardware.
Sorry, even though I agree with most of your other criticism that part is pure FUD. I successfully installed Windows XP to a P2 233 MHz (albeit with 320 MB of memory - server). It was kind of slow though (surprise) but not totally unusable at least.
Distro Disk Layout Problems (Score:2)
Re:Distro Disk Layout Problems (Score:2)
Hmmm, that's tight, but I recall putting Red Hat 5.x onto a single 540 MB disk. Then, as now, judicious package selection is key when you are dealing with the full distributions. Today, I'd put /usr onto the second drive and everything else on the first. DSL, Puppy or any of the other sub 100 MB distributions mentioned
makes sense to me... the perfect utility platform (Score:2, Interesting)
Depends on what you choose (Score:2)
So I'm thinking it depends on what distribution you choose and which desktop manager.
Re:Depends on what you choose (Score:2)
Re:Depends on what you choose (Score:2)
Newer distros not great for older hardware? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Newer distros not great for older hardware? (Score:2)
Xubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
is this really news? (Score:2)
From day 1 I knew how much more responsive linux was on older hardware.
Sure, it was a dog on big tasks but as the router/fileserver I built out of it it was as good as any Pentium class machine would have been.
LK
Not suprising (Score:2)
4 gig laptop harddrive
32 megs of ram (shared with video card)
But the worst part is that the keyboard that it came with doesn't have an Escape key.. which annoys me every time I use vim.
The problem with older versions of Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare this to Linux and you can use a new, fully patched, fully secure, fully tested release and scale it down to run on your old hardware, I think that's the key difference that's been missed by some here when recommending just using older Windows releases instead.
Put simply, using Linux on an old box means you can run an old box with modern software - modern in that is uptodate in terms of features, security updates and hardware support. It basically feels like when Microsoft gives up on an OS that OS is in a timefreeze, don't expect to have much luck with some hardware/software/security problem that emerged after MS gave up on it, compare that to Linux however and generally you'll have much more luck with resolving said hardware/software/security issue on the same hardware because some kind Linux developer, I guess that's the wonder of open source compared to proprietary.
Re:The problem with older versions of Windows (Score:2)
There's just no way to do that under Windows. Period. It was obvious from the very beginning that Redmond was, for lack of a better word, spewing pure bullshit. Running crappy old operating
Tecra 500CDT (Score:3, Interesting)
I use the "Classic" theme, 16-bit color (24-bit is unaccelerated by the driver) with ClearType enabled, and it runs nicely! Office 2003, Firefox, WinAMP, and various 2D games all work perectly fine.
When I tried Fedora Core 2 it thrashed the hell out of the hard drive due to the bloat of Gnome and KDE. Sure, I could have used a lightweight window manager, but I wanted something that approximated the functionality of Windows; turns out that I was better off just using Windows.
Linux certainly works on older hardware, but not with a very good desktop anymore. How hard would it be to use an older version of KDE or Gnome (I remember running them nicely on 64-meg pentiums back in the day!) with a modern distribution?
XFCE4?? (Score:2, Interesting)
I hate GNOME and KDE. I use Enlightenment 0.16.7 which runs nicely on everything from PII400 to AMD64 3200+.
Another advantage of *nix. Right tool for the task. A long ago discovered lesson by a network-centric weenie who just wanted an OS that facilitated my job rather than inhibiting it.
Re:XFCE4?? (Score:2)
I'm no stranger to the command line; I use it constantly, even under OSX (lots of shell and perl scripting), but I don't like having to use it just to move files around, as it disrupts my workflow.
Anyway, screwing around with a system is for me a means to an end, not the end itself.
Re:XFCE4?? (Score:2)
Re:Tecra 500CDT (Score:3, Insightful)
You could after all be a little less hypocri
MINIX (Score:2)
Don't forget Sparc (Score:4, Informative)
Right now the Sparcstation series is a bit long in the tooth for graphical use beyond an ultra-light window manager like XFCE, but they were small form factor before there was a mainstream market for it. Companies like Sun and SGI made small workstations with fast processors and great throughput (and high margins and prices!).
HArdwarecost vs software cost (Score:3, Informative)
If it's an internet gateway or print server, Linux wins again, because if your going to put XP on it to run such things, you've forked over the price of a proper router or print server that will use less power and be quiter and more reliable.
That's why Linux is better for old hardware, not becuase you can, but because sometimes it's actually worthwhile.
Not really (Score:3, Interesting)
I put Windows XP on it and the performance is much better. Faster boots, power management, and just all around better performance. I can even watch Xvid and H.264 encoded videos on it! Sure if I ran Linux in text mode it might be faster, but that wouldn't really suit my needs. The "Linux is faster on older hardware" myth is just that.
Re:Not really (Score:2)
Ubuntu 5.10 is not the best choice for older machines as someone else has mentioned.
I'm currently running Windows 2000 and Fedora 4 dual booted on a 800MHz Celeron with 256Mb.
They both run just fine and about the same. Other possibilities are Debian 3.1 (which is very stable and has older packages that would run better on older hardware.
Tools for the job (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll say go for the right tool for the job - vector linux is a current distribution that runs at a very good speed on hardware with a quarter of the specs of what you have. Even Fedora4 should run at a decent speed with enough memory - my primary work machine for the last year has been only a 600MHz machine (with 512MB of memory to make it run fast) - and it h
Pentium II? (Score:2, Interesting)
It'll run rather well on a 386, as long as all you want to do is use it as a local fileserver or router or something... I suppose if you got your hands on a hardware mpeg encoder/decoder you could use it as a DVR...
Perhaps what the article meant by "Linux" is Lin
Re:Pentium II? (Score:2)
Are you serious? The only version of unix I'm aware of that ran on 16 bit personal computers that I'm aware of is Xenix. Other household names such as BSD and linux were strictly i386, as earlier architectures were unsuitable for a unix system.
486-66 machine in college (Score:3, Interesting)
-b.
Old Macs: MacOS vs. Linux (Score:2)
Meanwhile, a Japanese hacker had patched the Linux kernel to run on stoneage Nubus Macs, so I used it to load up a Debian distro. With only 72MB of ram, 4MB video ram, it sucked rocks running X, but (comparitively) flew as a server.
Pick the right distro (Score:2)
I had a PI with 32M RAM running a lightweight Linux server setup. It had Apache, PHP, MySQL, Postfix and DJBDNS. Ran 50 mailboxes without ever having problems.
I have to admit though that everything was custom compiled for the box to run properly, and no way would it have come close as a desktop. That means specific kernel compile, apache tweak and compile, MySQL compile and Postfix/DJBDNS tweaks and compile. I even compiled PERL for it. Before, it was a desktop and ran Win98 - it sucked.
The sad paralle
Re:Pick the right distro (Score:3, Funny)
Is that like an i3.14159...86? ;)
Slackware 10.2 on 486 dx 66 laptop (Score:3, Insightful)
It was running DOS 4.1 when I got it (I assume this is what it was originally loaded with). I decided to improve its utility by loading Slackware 10.2 on it (You can see the full blown procedure I used here [linuxquestions.org]). I did not want to use the Zipslack install method (as mentioned in the article, you have some performance issues I could not afford on such old equipment). Without a CDROM, I would need to furthermore modify the installation process. I happen to have a Iomega parallel port zip drive, so I used the boot disk for the zipslack installation to access this drive. The boot disk assumes your root disk(s) will be on the parallel port device. The problem with that is that while the zipslack install disk can recognize and use the zip drive for installation, the regular installation root disks do not (have to talk to Patrick about that). Luckily, you can specify another mount location (just not the parallel port drive) - so I set aside a 100MB partition on the hard drive, and used that for the installation.
I booted the system from floppy using the zipslack root disk and the standard installation floppies. Then I mounted the parallel port zip drive, and partitioned, formated and mounted the 'source' partition on the hard drive. After that it was a simple matter to copy over the slackware packages I had earlier copied onto a zip disk from my workstation. Finally I kicked off the setup utility after partitioning the hard drive's remaining space. After that, the install was normal. Starting with a 350 MB root partition (used 50MB for swap, and the 100MB source) - I ended up with 25% free space (used about 225 MB for the packages I loaded). I was also able to free up the 100MB source partition afterwards - so I have a whopping 175MB to play with.
Note that I did not load all the packages available from the Slackware distro - most of the A and AP packages, the key network packages, and some development packages (python). So, no X-windows. However, I found an application called 'twin' (Textmode WINdow environment) [sourceforge.net] that emulated an X server, providing multiple text-based windows that have all the usual controls (resizing, scrollbars, window shade, minimize etc). Twin runs very fast on the 486, and provides the multiple window capability (including copy/paste between windows) that you would need for most jobs. Twin is an older program - last updated in 2003, which I had to build on my workstation, then move over to the laptop via the zipdrive.
Without a graphics capability, most of the modern tools available in KDE or GNOME are out of reach - but that is okay. I use 'jed' editor (emulates emacs commands - but smaller footprint), and am writing my own tools in python - basically to capture thoughts, and provide automation for uploading my field-notes onto my server when connected to my home network (saving my pennies to get a pcmcia NIC soon).
Extending the life of the laptop was well worth the trouble. While it may not be cutting edge in terms of looks - for what I do it gets the job done.
Slackware+Linux 2.4+WindowMaker not so hot either (Score:2)
Re:Slackware+Linux 2.4+WindowMaker not so hot eith (Score:2)
Re:Slackware+Linux 2.4+WindowMaker not so hot eith (Score:2)
Then you draw the conclusion "using X on an old PC is a big no-no" - it's not warranted. If that machine with run W2k usably, it has FAR more power than it needs for a decent X setup - assuming a decently supported video card. Now, if you have a vidcard that doesn't have any decent X drivers available... then your experience would make sense. I'd bet that's exactly what's
Re:Old hardware? (Score:2)
Any distro with KDE wont run well either.
Linux's advantage is that you can slim it down to
run on old hardware - including old PIIs and whatnot.
The real issue (Score:2)
You can't do this with Windows because you have no ability to strip the OS accordingly and only run what you need.
My firewall is still running a P1 with 32MB of RAM. I would run it on a 80486 with 4 MB RAM but if a network ca
Re:Old hardware? (Score:3)
Wow, that really puts our Pentium 200mhz Laptops with 80mb of Ram and 4Gb Hard Drives running WindowsXP to shame... (Themes enabled, OfficeXP, and development tools as well. We actually make our developers use these laptops, not only during testing cycles, but in day to day use to ensure the code they are writing meets this baseline.)
The fun point about these laptops, is that they benchmark and do run 20% faster than when the
Re:Old hardware? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Old hardware? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Zonker? (Score:2)
Re:Seriously, Who Cares? (Score:2)
Or a school, or a nonprofit, or someone who just needs email and has better things to spend money on.
My high school had mostly 400 mhz boxes with 64 megs of ram -- at best, usually more like half that (200mhz/32meg) until a very recent upgrade, which was actually pretty expensive. On the old machines, the OS of choice was NT 4.0 or Win2K, which both ran dog slow, with horrendous amounts of thrashing.
Who cares if you are running some arcane L
Re:PPC (Score:2)
Re:Macs too? Not really (Score:2)
You know, I've got a PowerBook G3 sitting here on my lap... runs plenty snappy enough for my purposes, in either OS X 10.3 or Linux (Gentoo PPC, stage 3). The closest I've really had to issues with this machine has nothing to do with the OS it's running and more to do with this hardware being picky about the memory you put into it. But such is the case with the Lombard-series laptops. In either case, it runs nicely for whatever I feel like throwing at it, keeping in mind that it's a bit memory-limited and
Re:I have a PIII switching from W2kPro to Debian.. (Score:3)