[ILUG] Which Distro?

[Rick Moen]

begin Smith, Graham - Computing Technician quotation:
> Very slightly off the topic here -
> Its rather odd that people (myself included) preach the benefits of
> Linux for extending the lifespan and usefulness old hardware.
> 
> And then you find an example like this where a P75/8 is unusable
> in Linux (in X) but probably quite usable in windows95.

*ix boxes are almost always I/O bound, not CPU-bound.  If you insist
on starving them for RAM and giving them single IDE hard drives and 
those pathetic ISA NE2000-clone cards, of _course_ their performance
will suck.

Around the time that P75 was in its heyday, I was happily cranking along 
in Linux/X11 with my old AMI Enterprise III motherboard, equipped with
64 MB of old-style fast-page memory and a pair of fast SCSI drives -- 
and in the background running Web and ftp sites, plus SMTP and POP3,
plus servicing shell users coming in from everywhere.

And, sorry, A P75 with 8 MB total RAM would have walked MS-Win95
slowing, not run it.

> I once installed Linux on a 486dx2-66mhz (Cyrix chip) with 16 MB ram.
> It ran win3.11 for workgroups quite happily, but running redhat 
> (i think i put 5.2 on it at the time) it was unusable in X.

No FPU, if memory servces.  But I could be mistaken.  The Cyrix was a
bit if-y.

-- 
"Is it not the beauty of an asynchronous form of discussion that one can go and 
make cups of tea, floss the cat, fluff the geraniums, open the kitchen window 
and scream out it with operatic force, volume, and decorum, and then return to 
the vexed glowing letters calmer of mind and soul?" -- The Cube, forum3000.org