BWAHAHAHA!

I was curious what hapen if I try to install the current Slackware (13.1-RC2) in my i486 box, at 25MHz, 8MB RAM, 250MB harddrive!

The result of trying to boot the installer's i486 kernel iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssss:

Not enough memory to load the specified image.

Well, the installer will NOT start! YOU CAN'T BOOT THE INSTALLATION CD! Bye, my oldie, you can't have inside the up-to-date Slackware! The current Slackware is NOT compatible with your old ass!

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sorry for the question, but what do you want to run on it with 8 megs of ram (beside the kernel, I mean)?

Well, I use my oldie as a home router, it connect to my Internet provider via PPPOE and serves 4 computers in a local network.

I use a minimal Slackware 9.1 installed years ago and use a very stripped down kernel. If I remember right, I worked few days to create a per-hardware customized 2.4 kernel...

Anyways, the i486 zealots graciously ignore what i486 sistems are, ie my oldie was latest hardware in it's good days.

8MB is not a typical configration for 486 machines, and anyone wanting to use slackware on a 486 would probably have at least 16mb, or more likely 32.

The amount of memory in your computer has nothing to do with the support for your CPU.
The installer requires 128 MB RAM in Slackware 13.1 but you do not have to use the installer to install Slackware...

Having said that, you gain nothing by wanting to run Slackware 13.1 or any other modern Linux distro on 8 MB RAM unless you strip it a lot.

Eric

Well, I use Slackware (9.1) in my oldie. So, if I want to update the Slackware in my oldie I need an hardware upgrade too...


Let's see...

#1 I created a vmware virtual machine with 16MB RAM, 256MB hardrive.

Testing results: the machine don't boot the installation cd, with the same message (not enough memory).

#2 I "upgraded" the virtual machine memory up to 32MB.

Testing results: ISOLINUX load the kernel and the initrd, but the kernel graciously fail to boot (not enough memory).

Conclusion: You aren't able to install Slackware-13.1-RC2 in a i486 machine, even if you have at least 32MB RAM installed.

I think that indeed it should be upgraded to i686, because for the aforementioned reasons, newer Slackware versions will NOT boot on i486. I don't use twitter, so I hope Pat V does check here too.

Well, I think that amount of memory has to do with the CPU architecture. Because, we don't talk about an abstract CPU, instead we talk about i486 machines, that (like well said our friend) most likely have 16MB or 32MB RAM (ignoring that my oldie have 8MB RAM).

IF an Linux distribution is NOT able to be installed/used in a specified architecture, I think that "supporting" this architecture is an NON-SENSE.

Let's live with the reality check. Slackware-13.X is not able to be installed/used in i486 machines by a poor user.

Sorry, but that is an exaggeration. AFAIK the only problem is that the supplied kernel needs more memory than pre-Pentium machines can support. This can trivially be worked round using a custom kernel. Everything else runs fine, given enough swap space and patience and lack of ambition

Additionally, going to i686 locks out i586 Pentium-class systems that *can* and *do* boot current Slackware just fine.

The question that needs to be asked and answered is, how much of a performance improvement does '-march=<whatever>' deliver on a specific system, in comparison to '-march=i486 -mtune=i686'? I seem to remember that the generally accepted answer is, "not much". Remember that '-march=i686' doesn't include MMX or SSE or 3DNow or SSE2.

If there *is* a significant improvement, one obvious solution would be to continue to support i486 on certain package series ('A', 'AP', 'N') and to go to i686 on the others ('KDE', 'X', 'XAP').

Really, the advocates of dropping support for older systems need to present some *actual* benchmark data with *specific* compiler tuning (maybe also revisiting the -O flag with the latest GCC).

Show us the data.

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If the average i586 Pentium class systems have 32MB or 64MB RAM, is most likely that the average user is not able to boot the installation CD. So? What is the point to support this architecture?

The real question is: what kind of machine have in the average case 128MB RAM, like AlienBOB said about installer requirements?

Also, what kind of machine is able to run a minimal Slackware 13.X, with all it's rings and bells (read UDEV, HAL, etc)?

Also, we should think about the minimal harddrive requirements, able to install a functional Slackware 13.X...

Don't forget that compiling for i686 will also drop support for the original Pentium CPU, as well as Geode, Via C3/EPIA and other embedded CPUs. And since I still run a Via Epia powered computer at home, my vote is that support for i486 will not be dropped.

Eric

Even in fact, you literally need an i586 target?

I suspect you are only trolling here. Why would we rebuild all of Slackware for i586? There is no gain.

Eric

Consider this. I have a Pentium MMX clocked at 233MHz with 128MB RAM (it was originally 64MB). The system will not boot with an SMP kernel.

So that I can continue to keep my system up to date with the latest versions of software that I use on this machine. It has been regularly upgraded since initially set up with Slackware Linux 9.0.

Just about any old MMX processor machine that has been given an extra 64MB RAM chip cannibalised from another old machine.

This machine serves my needs as a firewall/router for VNC port forwarding/print server/file server/ to seven Windows machines. It rings all my bells and blows all my whistles.

The original hard disk was 4GB, but when it failed was replaced with an 80GB hard drive. I do not install all of KDE (just those parts needed for kdesu) but install everything else simply for ease of upgrading. The operating system is currently using <4.4GB of disk space.

OK- I do not recommend it for a graphical environment or web surfing, but for sitting in the corner and fulfilling requirements for months on end without any attention (including occasional power outages), it cannot be faulted.

@LuckyCyborg- Please tone down your stridency and rhetoric. I would be far more convinced by any hard numbers that you could present that would show a worthwhile advantage by changing compile options.

So this works with what version of Slackware ? 13.0 ? I'd be surprised. If it does, then I guess we have to stick to i486.

It doesn't affect me any, I use x86_64.