You have an AMD k6 system with Linux on it? You'll need to mention it at least another dozen times so people know about it.

GasparB123 wrote on 2021-07-08, 22:24:

keenmaster486 wrote on 2021-07-08, 22:15:

Upgrade to 1 gig or more of RAM and use Debian XFCE. Also upgrade the graphics if possible.

The thing is PC133 doesn't go higher than 1GB I believe, and 512MB sticks are very hard to find by. Even if a find two of them, I hope the motherboard supports it. And it's even harder to find PCI graphics cards.

It doesn't have AGP? That would be unfortunate. You can find cheap later PCI graphics cards that aren't as nice for games but will do better in Linux.

The chipset is probably 440BX, which would mean 1 GB max RAM.

DosFreak wrote on 2021-07-09, 11:08:

You have an AMD k6 system with Linux on it? You'll need to mention it at least another dozen times so people know about it.

It's far easier and better than struggling with MS Windows 9x to achieve the same outcome. And way way more stable ding it. Yeah and can play Dos games on it as well.

It is no different to another vogons member bragging about being able to run win9x on a Core2 Duo.

After all the Marvin section is about showing what you can do on old x86 systems and the software that you do it with it believe.

I'm certainly not telling folk to use Linux but just what it is capable of on old kit. After all it is a,what one member said, an old fashioned operating system. It's roots go further back than when a student of Helsenki ceated the Linux kernel and runs applications that were used on very very early *nix systems. Xwindows was developed at MIT back in 1094 for instance. The fact that it is still being used on *nix today is a testament to it durability's, stability, size and is easily ported to different platforms both old and new. Linux runs even older programs even prior to Xwindows being developed.

In fact *nix was the inspiration for DRIs CP/M-MP/M which was the inspiration PC/MS Dos which was originally purchased elswhere.

VMS inspired MS Windows NT. When Dave Cutler, who despised *nix, and his team first developing NT they wanted it to be a cli operating system with the GUI placed on top. Gates said no. Here we are now clawing back the cli as possible some 30 years later. Yeah early NT was ported to other platfroms, 3-4 I think. How many platforms has *nix , in particular Linux , been ported too?

dataino.it wrote on 2021-07-07, 22:23:

Reading a old post (2011 https://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/showthread.php?t=2353055 ) the solutios is one of this distro […]
Show full quote

Reading a old post (2011 https://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/showthread.php?t=2353055 ) the solutios is one of this distro

SliTaz
ZenWalk
antiX
Puppy Linux
Macpup
VectorLinux

Obviously not the latest version.
But you have to test them

Puppy Linux is 64-bit only now I'm afraid..🙁

Using web.archive.org

https://web.archive.org/web/20051201000000*/h … /puppylinux.org

i find this "Puppy will boot off a minimum PC with 586 CPU and 32M RAM."

https://web.archive.org/web/20050401030717/ht … ware.com/puppy/

Why use an old unupdated version of Puppy Linux when the OP can run a current, updated 32-bit version like the three I linked to earlier prey tell?

You can get the older versions from here https://puppylinux.com/ funnily enough...😉

PuppyLinux aka BionicPup32 8.0 (based on ubuntu 18.04) should rune fine.

If I remember this right then I think it can be installed both normally and as a squash based install, and the latter is recommended by pup devs.

The Linux situation with old hardware is no longer what it used to be.

I use Linux on modern hardware and this slow drift away from compatibility happened so gradually that I missed the total impact thereof.

It seems as if all major big distributions nowadays only do 64 bit.

I recently wanted to install linux on one of the hdd's in my Katmai P3, since I seem to be spending a lot of time with it lately and I would like to get some work done inbetween too. I went for the 32 bit version of centos 7, since that is the closest LTS distro to the Fedora I use on a daily basis. It turns out it is compiled for pentium4, init (or rather, <put favourite swear word here> systemd) crashes as soon as the kernel finishes booting off install media.

Yesterday I tried booting the community ported 32bit Slackware 15 installer; it boots but there is for some reason no /proc once it finishes booting, so the thing is useless.

I am not a fan at all of weird little distros, not looking at those.

Currently I am mulling over trying freebsd or netbsd on it. I do not know bsd's at all, so I probably have to look and find out some time.

The question of what to run on a p3 is a solid one, it seems to me as if anything onwards from a p4 is still usable without great fuss, but the line is drawn at cpu's with sse2. p3 downwards now live in the deserted desert.

st31276a wrote on 2023-05-22, 09:29:

It seems as if all major big distributions nowadays only do 64 bit.

except "The Universal Operating System" (and Devuan, its fixed version which I recommend) 😀
Not as universal as 10 years ago, the "i386" version means Pentium Pro nowadays, same with OpenBSD which I also occasionally use, but even if this wasn't a problem I'm afraid all the other forms of bloat in today's software apply 🙁

There's also an unofficial port of Arch for 386, Pentium Pro, and Pentium 4 iirc, no experience but a friend of mine likes it (on the latter)

I think Gentoo (with distcc to cross compile on [multiple] modern computers) may really be the best option for a modern OS, since you can micromanage not only the exact architecture to build for but also and especially all the compile-time options to remove the dependencies you won't care about...
Maybe I'll try it some time as I've been wanting to but never bothered for the past 8 years or whatever 😜

Yes. Gentoo.

Although not exactly a “turnkey solution” it will probably work best.

st31276a wrote on 2023-05-22, 09:29:

Yesterday I tried booting the community ported 32bit Slackware 15 installer; it boots but there is for some reason no /proc once it finishes booting, so the thing is useless.

What community slackware 15.0 installer? There is an official slackware 15.0 32-bit installer. How much memory is installed in your system?

You will need 384mb to boot the official iso installer in slackware 15.0. Granted this is just booting, and the amount of memory used drops considerably once you get to a prompt. So it has something to do with an initrd or the unpacking routines or something like it to get a usable installer.

If you have slackware installed, I would have at least 128mb of ram anyway just to boot to text mode, but maybe more depending on how the initrd or what services are loaded at boot.

st31276a wrote on 2023-05-22, 09:29:

The question of what to run on a p3 is a solid one, it seems to me as if anything onwards from a p4 is still usable without great fuss, but the line is drawn at cpu's with sse2. p3 downwards now live in the deserted desert.

In the case of a p3, I think it depends on what you want to do with it. If you want to run the latest web browsers, then you'd want to probably want to solve why you are not booting, or how to get about installing the distro. If you don't need the latest web browser then more choices may open up. Slackware 15.0 is nice, but it will need some tweaks as a few programs do want newer than p3. Slackware 14.2 is won't require these tweaks, and could get very recent on browsers if you pull down some of the most recent updates, but it isn't really less memory demanding. At Slackware 14.1, the memory usage drops, but you might want to skip on a late web browser (although I don't know for sure what's possible). So a little guidance here on what you want to do.

One last mention on sse vs sse2. You may have to try rolling your own build of web browser just to get around that. I do this already with chrome to downgrade the requirements to sse2. I don't know if you can really go back that far to a p3 that easy. There are a few projects out there that may provide builds. But I think at this point, any distro is not going to provide those browser options. Unless it is a very specific one (gentoo?)

st31276a wrote on 2023-05-22, 09:29:

The Linux situation with old hardware is no longer what it used to be. […]
Show full quote

The Linux situation with old hardware is no longer what it used to be.

I use Linux on modern hardware and this slow drift away from compatibility happened so gradually that I missed the total impact thereof.

It seems as if all major big distributions nowadays only do 64 bit.

I recently wanted to install linux on one of the hdd's in my Katmai P3, since I seem to be spending a lot of time with it lately and I would like to get some work done inbetween too. I went for the 32 bit version of centos 7, since that is the closest LTS distro to the Fedora I use on a daily basis. It turns out it is compiled for pentium4, init (or rather, <put favourite swear word here> systemd) crashes as soon as the kernel finishes booting off install media.

Yesterday I tried booting the community ported 32bit Slackware 15 installer; it boots but there is for some reason no /proc once it finishes booting, so the thing is useless.

I am not a fan at all of weird little distros, not looking at those.

Currently I am mulling over trying freebsd or netbsd on it. I do not know bsd's at all, so I probably have to look and find out some time.

The question of what to run on a p3 is a solid one, it seems to me as if anything onwards from a p4 is still usable without great fuss, but the line is drawn at cpu's with sse2. p3 downwards now live in the deserted desert.

I have been working on a P3 system lately and I really like it. Here are a couple of my thoughts on OSs:

• Windows XP works great with 512MB of RAM. I used Firefox 48.0.2 which is the last for CPUs without SSE2 and it's still reasonably modern. For example I can still browse one of my favorite news sites, open links, and read them. There are a lot of TLS certificate warnings due to the old root store which I haven't resolved yet. I've tried the "BWC Root Certificates Update" but it doesn't fix anything, maybe because Firefox uses its own certificate store. Chrome v33.0.1750.149 also works and is the last for SSE1, but I find it slower and less compatible with newer sites than Firefox on this system.
• OpenBSD 7.3 (current version) i386 works great and IMO is your best bet for a non-Windows OS on this CPU, though its BSD and not Linux. I ran it on this CPU with Xfce and Netsurf and it was slow, but usable, and at least is still 100% modern and up-to-date. I love OpenBSD!
• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is (as far as I know) the last 32-bit release of Ubuntu and is still supported for 9 more days until 31 May 2023. I haven't personally used it, because I'm happy with dual booting XP and OpenBSD, but just an idea for future readers.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-05-22, 20:55:

What community slackware 15.0 installer? There is an official slackware 15.0 32-bit installer. How much memory is installed in your system?

Sorry, my confusement. I only use Fedora/CentOS and was looking around at different distro’s, considering Arch but seeing they only have 64bit with a community port. Then I moved on to Slack and found the 32bit iso.

I have 320MB in that computer. I did not see any errors unpacking initrd, but perhaps it gets truncated but boots anyway, missing some key stuff. I was wondering if that might be happening, but I do not have any more working sdram on hand to see if that is the case. Thank you for clarifying that 384 is required.

I am currently trying to maximize my Katmai experience; I never had one myself back in the day. I went C64, 286, 486, P2, P4. I want to experience it for what it was and also investigate what it can still do today.

It looks like most people who retro do it mostly for the games, I sort of think I understand why, but I would enjoy forcing some use out of it on occasion too.

I once compiled a Firefox srpm somewhere between version 9 - 13 on a Northwood back when that version was new. It was running slow for my liking and the distro was optimized for core2, thinking it would make a difference. It did not.

st31276a wrote on 2023-05-23, 12:16:

Sorry, my confusement. I only use Fedora/CentOS and was looking around at different distro’s, considering Arch but seeing they only have 64bit with a community port. Then I moved on to Slack and found the 32bit iso.

I have 320MB in that computer. I did not see any errors unpacking initrd, but perhaps it gets truncated but boots anyway, missing some key stuff. I was wondering if that might be happening, but I do not have any more working sdram on hand to see if that is the case. Thank you for clarifying that 384 is required.

Ah. 320MB is not one I see very often. I just checked that amount, and yes, the install disk will not boot. For reference, I see the initrd.img is 67mb on the disk.

st31276a wrote on 2023-05-23, 12:16:

I am currently trying to maximize my Katmai experience; I never had one myself back in the day. I went C64, 286, 486, P2, P4. I want to experience it for what it was and also investigate what it can still do today.

It looks like most people who retro do it mostly for the games, I sort of think I understand why, but I would enjoy forcing some use out of it on occasion too.

I once compiled a Firefox srpm somewhere between version 9 - 13 on a Northwood back when that version was new. It was running slow for my liking and the distro was optimized for core2, thinking it would make a difference. It did not.

And Firefox version 9 - 13 are well after the P3 series. By the time Firefox 1.0 was made, P4 & Athlon XP were the latest cpu. It's hard to say any effort went into sse-only. So it's possible a p3 would have been even slower. The best chance for P3 would likely be something like Gentoo or LFS specifically with -march=pentium3 or -mcpu=pentium3. I'm not aware of any distro ever released this way. It kind of casts doubt how useful sse/sse2 really is over fpu/mmx as a general optimization. (except in very critical code, like video playback, where programmers decided to use it) Also, I can't remember if version 9 - 13 was hungry memory, but a Northwood board may not have that much memory for a web browser? Today, I would try to have at least 1gb of ram for current versions of Firefox. Tight memory conditions are going to be an issue. So even if a Northwood is doable, I also think some of them will be slow for it.

I used Duron 800 with PC133 RAM for office work back in 2008. That felt slow by then already.

Your best bet IMO is to sell vintage stuff to retro enthusiasts and buy something cheap from dual-core era, like Celeron G530 etc, they are cheap as trash.