[Gllug] Linux for old 486

[Alain Williams]

On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 02:33:39PM +0100, Jason Clifford wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Alain Williams wrote:
> 
> > > The old RH installer (back in the days when it was C based) did much 
> > > better with server class hardware (think hardware RAID systems) and would 
> > > work in systems that had 8MB of RAM and perhaps less.
> > 
> > I seem to remember installing on a 5Mb box once.
> 
> The first time I installed a proper distro (Slackware back when it was 
> new) was onto a 386SX with 4MB of RAM.
> 
> It wasn't terribly fast (floppy disk installs - arghh) but it did install.
> 
> I can understand big RAM requirements for an install that uses X but 
> something curses based shouldn't require more than a fairly standard 
> kernel.

Not really ....
If you remember the really old installs, you needed to spend 1/2 hour trying to figure
which boot floppy image to use -- there were lots of different ones, each dealing with
a different set of hardware. The current install kernels seem to have much more stuff
nailed in and so you (generally) only have one - or perhaps 2 if you have a network install.

Playing module shuffling off floppy to try to find the right driver for your hard disk/
network card/... is painful and probably why it is no longer supported.

-- 
Alain Williams

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