system info request

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Sat Dec 5 20:28:31 1998

< I'm buying an old 486 and want to try some of the FREE alternative OS' (
< Microsoft stuff thank you) that are available for it. Operating systems
< as GEM, QNX, OS/2 and GEOS. Can anyone recommend any other that can be r
< such as embedded or old operating systems?

If you have at least 8meg of ram in that 486 try Linux, Freebsd, OpenBSD
or NetBSD. These are all free (maybe a few dollars for the CDrom) and
represent high performance unix operating systems of various flavors
that are mostly similar if not the same. I'm not a unix fan but compared
to MSwinders and the dos similars (other than OS/2 warp or concurrent cpm)
it's a real screamer.

Another one if your interested in OS internals is Minix, the disk set to
install on a 486 is only a dozen floppies and it will fit with sources
on a 40mb drive. It's unix but simpler, of the V6 flavor. it's
simplicity makes it quite fast!

Allison
Received on Sat Dec 05 1998 - 20:28:31 GMT