[plug] Free CD linux - any good ?

[Peter Wright]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 10:43:33PM +0800, Mike Holland wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Peter Wright wrote:
> > As others have stated, no, there isn't. Mandrake is one of those
> > distros that have decided to specifically say "stuff the low end"
[ ... ]
> Actually Peter, in 2001, the "low end" mostly means pentiums.

Well yeah... obviously to some extent it's a matter of perspective, but
generally yes. And of course if pentiums can be considered low end, then
486/386 machines would be ... extremely low end. :)

> The 486s have long ago gone to the dump, except some laptops such as the
> one that started this thread.

Well... actually I suspect you'll find that quite a few people on the list
will still be using 486's (and perhaps even 386's) in home server roles.

Imagine the sort of case where a home computer enthusiast might well have
an old machine sitting unused in a cupboard while he (or she - but most
likely he) does all his stuff (games, office shit, devel work, whatever) on
his latest high-end megabeasty machine. If he hears about Linux and decides
he'd like to play with it a bit, he's not (usually) going to want to risk
buggering up his main machine if he doesn't have to - so it's good that
Linux _will_ run on that old piece of junk that he hasn't got around to
throwing out yet.

Okay, I'm using my imagination a bit here, but I'm sure there are lots of
cases fundamentally like this. If you're new to the whole Linux thing and
you'd like to try it out, you're not going to use a machine that is (or
might be) useful - and most Pentiums are still quite capable of running
Win98 with some variety of MS Office. Especially in an office environment
where money might be very tight (and/or the procurement people follow the
model set by Bob the Dinosaur[0]).

I'm drifting from my point (such as it is) a bit - what I was essentially
trying to say is that I believe there is still a significant minority of
people using Linux on 486 or lower spec machines[1][2], and while I have no
problem at all with Mandrake not wishing to cater to that group, I hope the
other distributions don't decide to follow too closely in their footsteps.
Or at least not too soon. :)

> I'd be surprised if a mainstream distro would sacrifice much for 486
> support.

Just a bit of speed.

For most apps, you wouldn't notice any difference. For some, you would.
But of course any user can compile their apps using a Pentium-optimising
compiler and get those (slight) speed advantages anyway.

> pIIs/celerons are getting old now, and plain pentiums are positively
> ancient. They still make good servers though.

Certainly do.

> Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>

Pete.

[0] Bob works in Procurement:
Bob (to Wally): I'm afraid the equipment you want is not on the
	approved equipment list. Let me think... if I add this to the
	approved list, that's more work for _me_... but if I say no, it's
	more work for _you_... hmmm... think, think...
Wally: I'd like to see this alleged list.
Bob:   Well, it's not so much a list as it is a philosophy.

[1] And probably a larger percentage than, for example, Linux users as a
percentage of all computer users.

[2] Some of you on the list (Greg, Jeremy, that skinny guy with the glasses
who I met on Monday evening whose name I can't remember) know my housemate
Andrew. He runs our entire house network (at least 12 active machines)
through one 386 machine acting as nameserver and default internet gateway.
He's also got another 386 as our local web proxy and NTP server. Yes, those
machines can still be very useful. ;-)
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

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