[H-GEN] DX 386

[Greg Black]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and  ]
[ Unix-related topics.  Please observe the list's charter.           ]
[ Worthwhile understanding: http://www.humbug.org.au/netiquette.html ]

rudolf wrote:

| Is it possible to install linux on a DX486 machine (provided the hard disc is 
| large enough) and if so would it perform reasonably well?

In the subject line it's a 386, but in the body it's a 486.
there is a difference :-)

If it's a 386, it should work, but it will probably be such a
dog that you'd be better to forget it.  If it's a 486 and has a
decent amount of memory, it will be OK -- but it will be a dog
running X unless it has a fair bit of memory.

As for the definitions of "a decent amount" and "a fair bit",
think in terms of 16 Mbytes and 64 Mbytes -- I recently retired
a 33 MHz 486-DX box that was running FreeBSD (mostly without X)
on 16 Mbytes (its discs and other peripherals had been slowly
dying for several years and finally it wasn't worth the power
needed to spin things any more).  But when I ran X on it, I did
think it was a dog.

Of course, it also depends on your definition of "perform
reasonably well" -- it's hard to be certain what this means.

Greg

--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.