if you hadn't already known this about the PDP-8

From: Tothwolf <tothwolf_at_concentric.net>
Date: Thu Dec 13 21:34:30 2001

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Jeffrey S. Sharp wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Tony Duell wrote:
>
> > Since when has linux needed a video display card at all, let alone one
> > with 16M of RAM?
>
> I'm pretty good at making small distros of FreeBSD. Some people like me
> have gotten in to run in 4MB. The least I have ever done is 8MB. And
> it's not unbearably slow on a 25MHz 386 embedded card. I suspect Linux is
> similar.

I started out with Linux on a 386DX-25 with 4MB ram, so I know that works.
You could run X, but it was a little too slow for most things you would
want to use a gui for. A modern Linux dist that uses X would probably not
work too well on such a machine, but you can build up your own system from
source that will work just fine.

-Toth
Received on Thu Dec 13 2001 - 21:34:30 GMT