by badsectoracula on 8/11/22, 4:08 PM
Slackware might have worked too. I haven't tried Slackware 15, but when i was developing Post Apocalyptic Petra[0] (a DOS game for an MSDOS game jam) a couple of years ago and was trying to do some performance profiling, i did try the immediate previous version of Slackware in 86box emulating a 300MHz Pentium MMX[1] and it worked fine (though sadly "prof" didn't work since it required some functionality introduced in later CPUs, so i couldn't do the profiling).
I do remember that i had to replace a file in the ISO for it to boot (it was a mistake on Slackware's side and there was a patch for it in the forums) but i think this was patched in "current" so Slackware 15 should not need it.
[0] https://bad-sector.itch.io/post-apocalyptic-petra
[1] https://i.imgur.com/4X7lvZ7.png
by angrygoat on 8/11/22, 3:00 PM
The first PC I bought myself was a P2-400 with 128MB of RAM and an 11GB hard drive. I ran stock Debian, dual-boot W2K, and I had (just) enough hard drive for a full Debian i386 mirror (with source) so that I didn't need to download packages over my 56k modem.
Strange to read in this blog post that contemporary Linux distros wouldn't be at all useful on this hardware. I know they do a lot more, but the core of what I could do on that PC wasn't that much less than now: or maybe that's just nostalgia speaking?
by incanus77 on 8/11/22, 4:02 PM
by dTal on 8/11/22, 10:57 PM
It's not quite "retro" in the same sense, but I used to run Debian on a Zipit Z2 handheld computer as a daily driver. The CPU was a respectable 312Mhz ARM, but it only had 32Mb of RAM. X11 ran like a dog, but it was a perfectly functional machine if you stuck to the command line. It'd even compile software, provided it was written in C and not C++. This was around 2010.
I doubt you'd get any "mainstream" distros to run on it now, much less Debian. The bloat is real.
by forinti on 8/11/22, 5:30 PM
Nice. I recently tried a few small distros on a P166MMX with 80MB of RAM.
The best one turned out to be DSL.
Unfortunately, I could only get wifi using Win2K because of the driver and then IE can't handle current SSL protocols and most sites don't work.
I really liked using SPARCStations back in the day, and the amount of software available on them was probably a lot less than what even DSL offers. I guess we've become used to having a lot of software very easily available, so retro hardware seems a bit dull.
by hulitu on 8/11/22, 3:09 PM
He is trying to run a very modern kernel which has PATA emulation support. I guess that a lot of older drivers are just not implemented. Also AFAIK a lot of distros only support i686 due to glibc being compiled with SSE support. I would start with an older distro and try to upgrade glibc and maybe the kernel.
by rjsw on 8/11/22, 3:08 PM
I can run NetBSD-current on a Macintosh Quadra 950 from 1992.
by sbf501 on 8/11/22, 2:36 PM
> I have been interested in retro hardware for a long time.
Retro.
1997.
Cries in 8088.
by jeffbee on 8/11/22, 5:27 PM
Nobody would have had 256MB of RAM on a Pentium 100 in 1997.
by causi on 8/11/22, 4:11 PM
I had quite a hard time at this same task when I was trying to run Linux on my old Thinkpad 700 a decade ago. I believe Slitaz was the only distro I got to boot.
by dmitrygr on 8/11/22, 3:11 PM
Grub2?!
Use grub and it’ll work much better on old hardware
by smm11 on 8/11/22, 3:22 PM
Retro. I don't just run such stuff at home, I still support mid-90s stuff 9-5.
