Later versions of Linux absolutely do still support ISA. I rewrote the ancient Linux 1.x / 2.x INMOS Transputer interface board driver for the 3.x and 4.x kernels some 10ish years ago. That's an ISA part.

I disagree about Mint... it is one of the few systems that has stuck with a Gnome 2 derived interface and quite frankly it just works. Its my daily workstation for my professional life as well as my home system. No crap, it just does what you want a desktop/window manager to do.

Also, I haven't used a swap drive/partition/file for many, many years. It's just not needed any more.

Back when I was running Linux kernel 1.0 and 1.1 on a 386sx with 8mb ram, you absolutely needed a swap partition! These days, not so much!

Mint is my main linux distribution as well. I honestly prefer Cinnamon/Xfce to MATE but I prefer MATE to Gnome 3 and KDE.

I think 'trying to emulate Windows' is not a productive argument. The keyboard and mouse GUIs have been around for 40 years now, and kind of peaked around the Windows XP/7 era. So any desktop environment trying to emulate that experience can't really be blamed for that valid target. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel (I'm looking at you Apple, and your shitty desktop ui).

lEEt/OS + ST-DOS

"lEEt/OS is a graphical shell and partially posix-compliant multitasking operating environment that runs on top of a DOS kernel...

lEEt/OS also has its own DOS kernel, but it is still very experimental and unstable. For any real use it is recommended to use lEEt/OS on top of the FreeDOS kernel.
lEEt/OS is slowly but surely migrating from FreeDOS to ST-DOS, its own DOS kernel.

lEEt/OS is licensed with GPLv3 license."

System requirements for version 2:
* Intel 8088 or compatible processor
* 256 kB of RAM
* CGA or better graphics adapter
* 300 kB of floppy or hard disk space
* IBM PC-compatible BIOS

analog_programmer wrote on 2024-02-29, 13:00:

lEEt/OS + ST-DOS […]
Show full quote

lEEt/OS + ST-DOS

"lEEt/OS is a graphical shell and partially posix-compliant multitasking operating environment that runs on top of a DOS kernel...

lEEt/OS also has its own DOS kernel, but it is still very experimental and unstable. For any real use it is recommended to use lEEt/OS on top of the FreeDOS kernel.
lEEt/OS is slowly but surely migrating from FreeDOS to ST-DOS, its own DOS kernel.

lEEt/OS is licensed with GPLv3 license."

System requirements for version 2:
* Intel 8088 or compatible processor
* 256 kB of RAM
* CGA or better graphics adapter
* 300 kB of floppy or hard disk space
* IBM PC-compatible BIOS

Impressive!