[SWLUG] OS for old hardware

[Carter N.]

'evening all.

I'd like to invite a general-purpose discussion on choosing an OS for
hardware of meagre performance (read "old").

The temptation is to install a suitably old version of whatever
manufacturer's operating system one is devoted to. In the Windows (and DOS,
by implication) world, later versions have substantially greater hardware
requirements; I'm wondering if Linux is more forgiving of hardware. (One
naturally assumes that Linux is preferable to DOS/Win for any given era ;-)

There seems to be a distinction here between system (i.e. always running)
software such as the kernel and perhaps X, and user apps. I suspect the
kernel is not *that* sensitive to CPU speed, but, for instance, how
sensitive to graphics card era is X, and to CPU (and RAM?) specs are user
apps. I admit apps are diverse, so let's assume apps of middling demands?

By 'sensitive' I mean that one could -- assuming no pentium-specific m/c --
run any version of the kernel on a 486 and still be able to work
efficiently, but anyone trying to run the latest version of the Gimp on such
a processor might end up needing counselling!

In terms of a very notional graph, how steep is the plot of Linux version
(ignoring distribution issues) against CPU-required?

Cheers,

Neil
--------------------------------------------
Neil Carter            Psychology Department
IT Technician    University of Wales Swansea
                       Wales, United Kingdom

http://psy.swansea.ac.uk/staff/Carter/