Slackware, Gentoo & similar still have SysV startup available, I wonder how long for? Besides IMHO, comparing recent Linux to for example XP does not make much sense, the difference in technology is 17 years, so apples to apples, we need more or less 2000ish version of Linux/whatever*nix to be adequate. Windows 10 will run on old hardware, but will it be pleasant or smoth? Linux has dozen window managers, Microsoft only one. I ran Debian with XFCE and NetBSD (also with XFCE) on Dell Cpx laptop p3 650+1GB RAM recently and it still responds ok for it's age - it's by no means compared to SSD systems or you cannot watch YT, but for simple stuff it works (if someone feels nostalgia to old hardware - like most of people here do 😀 ).

Microsoft vs. old CPUs:
Windows 7 support dropped for CPUs without SSE2

yawetaG wrote:

dionb wrote:

And then you have systemd, which is megalithic and has become almost an OS-in-an-OS.

The BSD's are fortunately still SystemD-free... 😎

So is Slackware and Gentoo. Lately every computer I have Linux on uses Gentoo. And it's not because I like compiling everything from scratch.

stamasd wrote:

So is Slackware and Gentoo. Lately every computer I have Linux on uses Gentoo. And it's not because I like compiling everything from scratch.

I'm a Debian guy, but thankfully others have taken steps to provide a SystemD free option for people like me.

Firtasik wrote:

Microsoft vs. old CPUs:
Windows 7 support dropped for CPUs without SSE2

I found some comment on the Internet about this:

"The report notes that SSE2 was introduced in August 2000.
Initially, Microsoft indicated in the “workaround” column of the known issue that it was working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.
However, in the June security update, the text has been changed to read as follows: 'Upgrade your machines with a processor that supports SSE2 or virtualize those machines.' ", oh Microsoft 😕 ... resolution by updating release notes for patch <facepalm>

Funny enough they still require 1Ghz CPU officially https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/1073 … em-requirements 😀

Reading through all this, and doing a bit of googling. Makes me not recommend Linux for a 386. The best bet, to get Linux running, are eighter an old outdated and 10+ year old Linux distro. Or getting one of those basic Linux running. By basic, I mean distro's like Linux From Scratch. If you know what you are doing, and know how to tame all aspect's of the beast, then a basic kernal installation and manually updating the packages would be the best bet on a 386.

That said....
I think you need to look for a Unix instead of a Linux install. There are multiple versions of BSD Unix that are free. The problem is, that I have not looked into what CPU are the basic requirements on any of those. I only remember one of them, having support for at least the first +15 different platform's and not just Mac and x86. There are versions like Free-BSD, Open-BSD, Dragonfly-BSD and so on.

EDIT:
There are something called "Tier-II" at the Net-BSD project. It has support for a butt-load of platforms. 😳
https://www.netbsd.org/ports/#ports-tier2

I still think an old version of Slackware is worth trying, if enough memory is present. By old I mean pre-4.0. It would be based on kernel 2.0.x which is very lean (2.2 and increasing bloat happened after version 4) but a 386 wouldn't need all the drivers for new PCI and AGP devices. The compilet would be old too (it was the time of the transition old-gcc/EGCS/new-gcc) and that would limit the amount of new software that you can install on top but for a proof of concept it would be adequate and give you a machine to play with. You could even try Zipslack first.

Yea, back in the day I ran a 486DX2-66 with 16 MB with FreeBSD 4.0.
I don't think you can go much lower than that though, memory-wise, with a BSD or Linux.
Old versions of Xenix would be better for that.

Scali wrote:

Old versions of Xenix would be better for that.

Some IBM servers, based on a 386, ran Xenix. As far as I remember, it was a tower model that I saw in late 1995.

Scali wrote:

Yea, back in the day I ran a 486DX2-66 with 16 MB with FreeBSD 4.0.
I don't think you can go much lower than that though, memory-wise, with a BSD or Linux.
Old versions of Xenix would be better for that.

It wasn't until FreeBSD 5.0 dropped the i386 from the default kernel, but I remember running 4.x 'fine' (seemed OK to me) on an 8MB Am386DX-40. I also ran RedHat 4.something, but then the next release had major glibc changes that annoyed me and I put it away for a while.

Older distributions supported 4mb with some caveats.
https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slack … -3.1/LOWMEM.TXT

gdjacobs wrote:

Older distributions supported 4mb with some caveats.
https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slack … -3.1/LOWMEM.TXT

Another interesting read is https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/4mb-Laptops.html

I don't know why so many people are saying that Linux had trouble on old systems. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this conversation but I used Redhat 5.2 back in the day on a 486DX2 25MHZ machine with 4MB ram. The documentation from the Redhat Unleashed book even states for 5.2,

"The minimum system requirements for Linux is an 80386SX or better, 2MB RAM or more, floppy disk
drive, a hard drive with 40MB or more, and a video card and monitor. Having said that, most users’
systems are better equipped. To get realistic performance from a non-GUI (character-based) Linux
installation, you need an 80386 with 8MB RAM. If you want to run X or Motif, a fast 80486 or Pentium
with 16MB RAM is plenty."

of course, 1MB, as stated earlier in this thread is probably pushing it, that would be interesting to see. You would probably have to use something older so that the hardware of the time would be supported.

Systemd is the devil. I don't know how anyone in the community agreed to it. Makes no sense at all.

I remember running Linux on a 386sx with 4MB once. It is possible, but pita. Took 12 hours+ to compile a kernel. Distro was an ancient SuSe with a pre 2.0 kernel and no Gui installed. Speaking of Xenix, this was availiable even for 286, and there were other Unix clones availiable like Coherent.

b3stbuddy wrote:

I don't know why so many people are saying that Linux had trouble on old systems. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this conversation but I used Redhat 5.2 back in the day on a 486DX2 25MHZ machine with 4MB ram. The documentation from the Redhat Unleashed book even states for 5.2,

[...]

*Modern* Linux is a pita on old systems these days, with almost as many architectural dependencies and footprint as current Windows versions. In the past (say 15 years back) that was different, you could run an up-to-date Linux system on pretty much anything from a 386-16 onwards, which made it a great choice for putting old hardware to good use. People who remember those days (like me) tend to bitch and grumble that that is no longer the case 😉

Of course you can run an old Linux on old hardware, but that's no challenge (and also stuff you really don't want to have connected to public internet, just like with old Windows)

eisapc wrote:

Speaking of Xenix, this was availiable even for 286

For 8088 even.

Not quite the same thing, but I've been working on patching OpenWRT Backfire so it's more up to date. I'd like to use it on some older commercial radios which are quite resource limited.

On a different note, any Mac people mess with A/UX?

gdjacobs wrote:

Not quite the same thing, but I've been working on patching OpenWRT Backfire so it's more up to date. I'd like to use it on some older commercial radios which are quite resource limited.

On a different note, any Mac people mess with A/UX?

I always wanted to have an A/UX machine (I'm not a Mac guy though). It was supported on a very limited range of hardware, and the closest I ever came on having a computer able to run it was when I found an incomplete Mac IIcx back in the early 2000s. I didn't have the money to buy the parts I needed to make it functional, and eventually had to give it up when I moved. I did install A/UX and played a bit in an emulator a few years ago - but that's not the same as running it on the bare metal.

edit: https://github.com/pruten/shoebill is the only emulator I know of that can run A/UX - because it was made specifically for it. Other m68k emulators like Basilisk and SheepShaver can't because they don't emulate the MMU.

I once had an Apple Mac SE/30 with 16MB of RAM that I installed A/UX on. I booted it all of three times after installation until something (I assume a cap) catastrophically failed and shorted the motherboard to the point of traces frying and compontents popping left, right and center. That was the end of my A/UX adventure - I was on the lookout for a replacement SE/30 (particularly as my 4MB SIMMs survived the storm), but only ever found one more locally I could afford, which was predictably dead :'(

In the very short time I could play with it, it was amazing. This was around the time of the Linux 2.4 kernel and early Gnome, KDE or good old Windowmaker as a reference. The Unix underneath it all felt a bit alien and limited compared to Linux, but the seamless integration of the System 7 UI made it feel so much slicker. I later got my hands on a NextStation, which was something of an anticlimax by comparison, even though the computer itself was vastly more powerful. I could even run ssh on it 😜

It appears that there's now a m68k branch of QEMU, and according to the wiki page "Mac OS and Linux are expected to run in this emulator one day"
https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/68k
So maybe it will run A/UX as well.