i586 kernel [was Re: Module symbol versions in installer kernel]

[Matthew Miller]

On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 03:04:33PM -0400, Stan Bubrouski wrote:
> Not to doubt you, but there are plenty of people using their old 586's
> for everything from local ftp servers to gateways, etc... there are lots
> of uses for i586's that don't need X.

Certainly. I was, until two years ago. And I've got a Toshiba Libretto
pentium subnotebook which I still use.

I'm just not sure that this is these are the targets for a general-purpose
distribution.


> > I'm very sympathetic to making Linux run on older hardware, but Fedora is
> > already pretty unfriendly to those systems as is. Why not just make the
> How so? A stripped down install is still more powerful than a palm :)

On the contrary -- a tailored install can be a lot more powerful than a
shoehorned general-purpose system.


> > can cover before that.
> A simple stripped down install of fedora works on 586 CPUs, -X and the
> flashy crap and you got a nice small server.  The fact of the matter is
> people still use them.  This reminds me of running X on my p166, boy
> those were trying times ;-)

I don't doubt that it works. I *would* be interested in seeing some real
numbers on usuage.


-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>