Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1156 mails)

[weissel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Wolfgang Weisselberg)]

Hi!

Trying to kill the keyboard, roberto@xxxxxxxxx produced:
> > I am another 'clueless newbie'.
> > A month ago I got an old laptop 286 and since then I'm wondering if there is any
> > chance to put Linux on it.I'd love it!!
> 
> Not gonna happen.  the 286 is a 16 bit chip.  linux is a 32 bit os.

Well, there is the ELKS project (<A HREF="http://www.uk.linux.org/ELKS-Home/";><A HREF="http://www.uk.linux.org/ELKS-Home/</A">http://www.uk.linux.org/ELKS-Home/</A</A>>),
but it is definitely 'expert only': "ELKS is intended as a subset of
true Linux, and ought to be small enough to be understood by one
person, so it should be invaluable as a learning tool. It is in the
very early stages of development, and big chunks are missing, such as
swapping, shared libraries, parallel and serial I/O, and networking.
Having said that, it is already able to boot, provide virtual consoles,
mount a root minix filesystems floppy, and start various small
programs." (says the FAQ, from 1 month ago)

However, if you want to sink a lot of time and learn a lot about
kernels, 80x86 processors (x=0..2), C, etc. go ahead, but it it a most
stony road and support will be sporadic if at all. Do it if you really
love that kind of stuff. Else, better abstain or you'll be severely
disappointed.

Minix was suggested, but is for research and educational use only. And
there are other drawbacks. 

-Wolfgang


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