Linux distros for older hardware (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 25, 2006 20:08 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

But there are other reasons.. For example disk I/O should be faster on modern kernels versus older ones. I've sworn that I've read that benchmarks with newer kernels on older hardware show a substancial increase in performance. Lots of other things are going to be faster on modern software then older stuff... I think feature for feature if you use the same style of software that was aviable on older machines then it should actually be faster now then it was before.

Like the first time i realy used Linux was with Redhat 7.0 on a (overclocked) 200mhz machine with 96 megs of RAM. With Gnome 1.x series. Nowadays I can get better stability and functionality with Window Maker, Epiphany, Thunderbird, Abiword and other applications and it probably would be just as fast or faster then what I originally used.

Then you also now have things like Rox file system, Dillo, graphical versions of Links, and all sorts of stuff like that can provide good functionality to resource strapped computers.

Also there is stability and such.. Modern systems come with journalling file systems, for example. Ext3 does not cary with it much more overhead when compmared to Ext2, but has vastly improved data protection capabilities.. which improve as time goes on. Older systems also provide a level of maturity over more modern hardware.. hardware drivers have had lots of time to mature and get the bugs shaken out. Tools like Alsaconf allow it to make it easier to use modern driver designs to get good sound out of older sound cards. Dmix allows you to multiply multiple sound sources and such.

As long as you avoid certain resource-sapping features (such as using 800x600 resolutions in 16bit and avoiding anti-aliased text instead of getting everything fancy) you can probably get better performance and stability with more modern software then using old stuff.

that is unless your dealing with very old hardware... Talking about 20megs of RAM or less with 60-120mhz machines and such. Then your going down below the thresehold that even 'minimalist' software authors are willing to support. When using Xen I can't even get a 2.6 series kernel to boot on virtual machines with only 16megs of RAM alocated to them.

I remember trying to get a old 386 thinkpad working using Linux. It had 8 megs (could of been less) of RAM total. I couldn't even get floppy-based Linux systems to boot up on them because it didn't have enough RAM to support a ramdrive for them to function with more then one floppy disk. After struggling with it for quite a bit I could get some kernel installed, but my only source of software that I could use was from some ancient version of Slackware.

For situations like that I would expect that FreeDOS would be a much much better choice then Linux. Maybe NetBSD. http://www.freedos.org/

After giving up on Linux (got it working, but didn't find anything interesting I could do with it) I've found that it made a absolutely fantastic serial terminal for my Linux box. I was absolutely suprised on how well it worked out for that task. This was before I discovered FreeDOS and I used MSDOS 6.00 with Kermit and a Null Modem Serial cable (called Laplink cables.. carefull serial cables are wired differently and using the wrong type can damage your hardware) to log into a getty. This was great use for it and provided a extra keyboard and terminal for doing things like controlling the cdrom music, monitoring logs, and launching games and such on my desktop system.

If you have a old laptop with a fried battery or whatnot I wholeheartedly recommend it as a X or Serial terminal to a more powerfull machine. It's like a mobile keyboard and monitor that you can take anywere and attatch to your servers and such.