Re:Modern Linux in an ancient PC
by jhallenworld on Saturday January 06, 2018 @10:57AM
(#16085759)
Wow it's a lot slower now than it is with 1992 Linux. I remember a key benchmark was how long it takes to compile the kernel (and was astonished at how fast Pentium-Pro was when it came out).
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Another example of the shocking bloat of modern software.
I had a 486 with 16 megs of RAM and was able to browse the web (Netscape 1.0!), compile kernels, and have something like 8 people logged in remotely checking email.
I'll trade you an 80's era mainframe that had all the bank branch offices of a small country online with only a couple of megabytes of RAM.
Out of curiosity I recently installed Debian Stretch on my Pentium Pro 200 (dual CPU). The text based installer warned that my 128MB of RAM wouldn't be enough for it to finish, but luckily it still succeeded. The system boots within a minute or so and is fairly usable. Running X on s3fb with i3 as the WM, the selection of usable GUI programs is rather limited then admittedly. Still, I guess we really came a long way from 486 to PPro. :-)
I had a stack of ~25 floppies that I used to download linux with X and some programs to run on a 486.
Software has gotten much bigger...
This may be fun to play with: http://distro.ibiblio.org/amigolinux/download/XApps/xtacy-1....