-----Original Message----- From: Jan Engelhardt To: gm1mqe@aol.com Cc: opensuse-factory@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse-factory] I386 Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 20:34:52 +0200 (CEST) On Saturday 2013-04-06 19:44, gm1mqe@aol.com wrote:

Out of interest will; a laptop with an 386 running at 20Mhz run linux?

Yes, provided you use Linux kernel < 3.8. -----Original Message----- Regarding a distro, yiu have to go back a long time. If it were a simple 586, maybe. But a 386 ???? Furthermore, these old beasts often have hardly any memory. below 512MB you have to stick to CLI-only, and below 1GB i'm not sure if you'll get KDE or GNOME workable. More likely that swapper is making over-hours ;-) fyi, I still have a machine with only 64MB @ 25MHz, But that little thing in only doing KDE-1 from suse_7.0 hw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Hans Witvliet wrote:

Regarding a distro, yiu have to go back a long time. If it were a simple 586, maybe. But a 386 ????

Furthermore, these old beasts often have hardly any memory. below 512MB you have to stick to CLI-only, and below 1GB i'm not sure if you'll get KDE or GNOME workable. More likely that swapper is making over-hours ;-)

Actually, both LightDM and FVWM2 work pretty well with 128M. I used to run them on an old Pentium-Pro, I just kept upgrading the OS, maybe building a kernel or two, and both of those WM were quite usable. The Pro died a while ago, so I'm wondering what life are you expecting form a 386. In any case, 386s have a lot less RAM than that. 512M is Pentium-III stuff. My old 386 has 4MB, and the motherboard's top was not much more, can't remember exactly how much. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to find one with 128M even. You can probably run CLI just fine. LightDM and FVWM2 will run on almost anything too, but usability is another issue. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, 2013-04-06 at 17:06 -0400, James Knott wrote:

Rick Chung wrote:

...

Most Linux distro seem to support Pentium CPU and upper.

What's the latest SuSE version that supports the i386? Is it still available for download from somewhere. I have SuSE 5.3, from about 15 years ago here, which should run on it.

I have a 386SX machine with 5MiB ram, and I installed 6.4 on it, I don't remember for sure. It runs very slow, text mode. I don't remember if I tried graphics. (I can not easily hook it up to keyboard and display to see what it has) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from 12.1 x86_64 "Asparagus" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.18 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlFgovgACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XffgCfbcOh2aIZjZ1cZ8McpWPH31RI 4H4AnRvHNZWTvMR47P4NAnr1sJiDQmwb =9s3p -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org