Which distribution best for VIA KM400/KN400

kel_en · 06-01-2013, 12:06 PM

I have two machines with the KM400/KN400/A chip sets and both have Athlon K7 processors. One machine is a desktop and one a laptop. I have run Debian successfully, Sarge through Squeeze, for many years in both machines. However, Debian 7, Wheezy, will not work in the laptop. I'm afraid to try the desktop. I spent a lot of effort and gave up, eventually going back to Debian 6, Squeeze. All indications are that Debian has abandoned support for this type of hardware in their default systems. The kernel no longer supports the VIA 82C586A IDE controller and the latest Openchrome driver is a problem. I thought Gentoo would be a good alternative and I developed a great text machine but couldn't get X to work at all, probably the Xorg Openchrome driver problem, so back to Debian Squeeze with an older Openchrome driver. Any suggestions for a new distribution, including the BSDs, that would likely support my hardware in the coming years?

GlennsPref · 06-01-2013, 06:39 PM

Hi,

Quote:

I have two machines with the KM400/KN400/A chip sets and both have Athlon K7 processors

I had two of these running when they were new on Mandriva. They were both desktops with ati/nvidia graphics cards (no on-board graphics)

The main machine was a proxied(to save isp bandwidth costs) firewalled gateway.

One question, have you been able to upgrade the kernel using the installed modules?

This can help making sure and older module is not neglected, I think the command is...

Code:

make localmodconfig

There are bound to be other answers, but I hope this helps you.

rokytnji · 06-01-2013, 06:58 PM

Might work out of the box with hand massaged i486 kernels.I am not sure since I don't have your gear.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/anti...files/Testing/

Quote:

At the moment antiX-12 comes as a full distro (c695MB), a base distro (c355MB) and a new core distro (c135MB) all for 486 (PI and K5/K6 AMD) and 686 kernels. For those who wish to have total control over the install, use antiX-core and build up.

This has carried over into AntiX 13.

http://antix.mepis.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Timothy Miller · 06-01-2013, 07:09 PM

Slitaz is specifically aimed towards older machines, as does Frugalware. I've had a little experience with Frugalware, since it's originally based on Arch linux I really like the package management. The installer is sufficient. I had issues with modern hardware with it, however, as it is aimed at older hardware you might have better luck. I've never tried Slitaz but heard good things.

kel_en · 06-01-2013, 07:45 PM

Thanks for the replies. I will check antiX, Frugalware and Slitaz. I hope to find a distribution that uses XFree86 and not Xorg since the last time I checked XFree86 still allowed the use of the Via driver instead of the Openchrome driver. I believe a custom kernel will resolve the IDE problem associated with the 2.6.32 and 3.various Debian kernels. I haven't figured out how to build a custom kernel since my /boot partition is not large enough to hold a second kernel and its init files. I'm thinking about that one. The command "make localmodconfig" will be probably be useful since I know what modules I need. Thanks again.