[wellylug] Linux on Antique Boxen

Peter Jones PeterJ at indeserve.co.nz
Mon Nov 25 08:06:10 NZDT 2002


With memory retailling at around $0.50 /meg theres no real excuse 
to hold back on the ram.
(reminiscence mode on) when I were a lad, RAM was over $150/meg. And we
thought we were lucky!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ilia Pavlenko [mailto:ip at globe.net.nz]
> Sent: Monday, 25 November 2002 07:33
> To: Wellington WLUG
> Subject: Re: [wellylug] Linux on Antique Boxen
> 
> 
> > I've just spent a painful weekend installing GNU/Linux onto 
> a friend's
> > P133 PC with 32MB RAM and 1GB HDD.
> >
> > A big part of the 'fun and games' was building a 2.4.19 kernel, and
> > installing a driver for the WinModem, as well as experimenting with
> > various combinations of desktop software.
> 
> You don't necessarily need 2.4 kernel. 2.2 will do just fine of
> workstation. Compile on big box, copy kernel and modules to small box
> using floppies (come on - vmlinuz only about 600k, and 
> /lib/modules/...
> could be bzip2'ed and transported using several floppies.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >
> > It took longer for make to build the kernel deps than my 
> 1.5GB box takes
> > to build the whole thing. Tried building on big box and 
> NFS'ing over,
> > but for some reason the small box kept choking the link to 
> about 12kb/s.
> >
> > Wasn't nice either that the box is a Compaq Deskpro, with no onboard
> > BIOS and no BIOS floppy - had to boot off Debian rescue and root
> > floppies before I could hit the CD drive.
> 
> 
> yes, Compaqs are  booby trapped :) you should've  kept that "compaq
> maintenance" partition of 20Mb, which has the "Bios"
> 
> 
> >
> > Luckily the box had an onboard NIC well-supported by Linux (what NIC
> > isn't! :)) Otherwise it would have been dial-up hell.
> >
> > Mozilla takes over a minute to load, and Dillo is too dumb, 
> so I've gone
> > for most of KDE, with Konqueror and the office apps, with 
> Sylpheed for
> > the email. OO totally out of the question.
> >
> > I tried the minimalist approach - fluxbox, links/dillo, 
> pine etc, but
> > what was gained in speed was way lost in user-friendliness 
> (my friend is
> > a PC newbie).
> 
> did you kill the junk that starts up automatically ? all these daemons
> that noone needs on w/station ?
> 
> 
> >
> > As for partitions - 16MB boot, 80MB swap, the rest root, with swapd
> > standing by to carve off 16MB chunks in case of emergency.
> >
> > Still not brilliant - 2 mins to boot, 40 secs for Konqueror 
> etc, but at
> > least it's a newbie-friendly desktop now, albeit a complete
> > swap-thrasher.
> 
> did you measure bootup time of win98 in networked enviroment with
> everyone's favourite McAfee antivirus and micros~1 office 
> toolbar/findfast
> ?
> 
> >
> > KPPP totally loses the plot - keeps terminating the dialup 
> connection
> > and starting again - so I wrote a couple of suid progs 
> which launch and
> > terminate pppd directly.
> 
> dial-on-demand mode ON ?
> 
> 
> 
> Have a lot of fun :)
> 
> Ilia
> 
> 
> >
> > Bottom line of all this?
> >
> > 64MB is a bare minimum for a usable system.
> > Anything less feels like root canal therapy during a 
> hangover with no
> > anaesthetic.
> >
> > This is something people might like to keep in mind when 
> volunteering
> > for the SeniorNet Linux install program.
> >
> > If anybody asks me again to build a user-friendly Linux 
> desktop on such
> > a tiny box, I think I'll be telling them to either upgrade 
> RAM, or go to
> > Cash Converters and score a cheap CD from that notorious 
> northeast USA
> > company and fend for themself.
> >
> > Cheers
> > David
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >   .-.   Wellington
> >   /V\   Linux
> >  // \\  Users
> > /(   )\ Group
> >  ^^-^^
> >         http://wlug.paradise.net.nz/
> >
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
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> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >
> 
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>   .-.   Wellington
>   /V\   Linux
>  // \\  Users       
> /(   )\ Group
>  ^^-^^
>         http://wlug.paradise.net.nz/
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  .-.   Wellington
  /V\   Linux
 // \\  Users       
/(   )\ Group
 ^^-^^
        http://wlug.paradise.net.nz/

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