Hi,

I've installing about 10 or more different distributions on my VIA Epia ML 3000 board wich is intended to be my new small and energy saving web server.
Unfortunateley, I found only one working kernel (an old Ubuntu 5.34 without Apache, PHP and MySQL - but I need it all). Every other newer distribution (e.g. Mandriva, SUSE, K/X/Ubuntu etc.) didn't work on that f...... Nehemiah (or C3) processor. It doesn't seem to be a fully compatible one.

I just need a text based system without any KDE, Gnome & Co. It should be installed on a 1GB compact flash card.

Additionally, so far I haven't any experience in linking and compiling my own kernel.

Please help me...

AFAIK, the Nemiah is fully x86 compatible, just not with any particular x86... That probably sounds like a nonsense answer, but what I mean is that the core is x86, through and through, but where contemporary Intel and AMD chips were squabbling about who had the latest variants of the SSE instructions, the Nemiah may well go back a generation in its adoption of the add-on instructions.

Now, probably, this isn't a big problem if you are prepared to compile your own kernel, as then you will be able to configure the kernel for exactly what you know you've got, but that sounds as if it might be a bad suggestion, in your particular case.

The only other suggestion that I can come up with is to have a look at some of the distros aimed at older hardware, as the older hardware at which they are aimed probably has even less in the way of add-ons

Does the VIA site itself maybe have some useful information on distros?

The c3 is *almost* an i686 cpu, *almost*.

This means that it will not correctly run a kernel (nor anything) that has been compiled for i686. Distros compiled for i386-i586 should just work, though.

It also features mmx and sse, as far as I remember.

The kernel is the least of the problems, you can build your own, just make sure you enable the generic x86 instruction set and you should be fine.

The problem is that if the kernel has been compiled for i686 or a superior cpu then there's a big chance that the rest of the distro has been compiled with the same options, so you would need to recompile the rest of the stuff as well.

Your best choice is to find a distro that is compiled for the right instruction set.

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?ca...&status=Active

Alternatively you can always compile your own, using Gentoo or LFS. I doubt that you are going to find anything compiled specifically for c3, so you will end using a distro compiled for i586 or a previous one, unless you choose this way, in which case it's just a matter of using the correct -march option when compiling.