Very Computer

by **Russel** » Fri, 08 Mar 2002 10:00:34

I have an old 100MHz (maybe 133MHz, can't remember for sure) machine that I
don't use for anything anymore, and I'm taking a unix class at school and
I'd like to have something at home to play around with. Would this machine
be ok to run linux on just for learning purposes?

Thanks,
Russell

by **Paul Pluzhniko** » Fri, 08 Mar 2002 15:15:57

> > I have an old 100MHz (maybe 133MHz, can't remember for sure) machine
that I
> > don't use for anything anymore, and I'm taking a unix class at school
and
> > I'd like to have something at home to play around with. Would this
machine
> > be ok to run linux on just for learning purposes?

> The MHz doesn't matter much. The thing that matters the most is
> the hardware architecture (Intel, Alpha, Sparc, Mips etc.).

> I assume the machine you have is an old i386-based machine.

A 100MHz 386? I don't think they were ever faster than 33MHz.
Presumably at 100 or 133MHz it is a Pentium.

Quote:> You
> should have no problem running Linux on it, but check out the
> Hardware HOWTO at [1] to be sure.

I just installed latest SuSe (7.3) on a 75MHz Pentium ...
In the process I discovered that:

- 8MBytes of RAM is fine to run tiny floppy-based distribution,
such as LRP, but there is no RAM left for anything else.
- None of the current installers will run in less than 32M,
so you can't even get started with SuSe, Mandrake or RedHat.
- For about $25 you can find a pair of 32M 72-pin SIMMs on eBay,
which allows you to use text-mode installer.
- 512MB disk is too small for anything but the 'minimum'
installation, which would be fine to play with shell
and standard Unix commands. For a more comfortable
development machine, about 2GB of disk is required.

[How times changed: my first Linux machine ran X11
on a 386-33 with 8M of RAM and was still able to compile
the kernel in only 2 hours ;]

Once installed, 75MHz Pentium (148 bogomips) feels a bit
sluggish (compared to 800MHz PentiumIII at 1684 bogomips),
but is quite useable.

Cheers,

Very Computer

Is this machine ok to run linux?

Is this machine ok to run linux?

Is this machine ok to run linux?