On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 02:34:36PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: > On 04/04/07 15:17, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: > [snip] > > I know that I can get debian to do it, but the more hoops I have to jump > > through to do it, the more its like a roll-your-own linux that happens > > to use apt. At some point, it may make more sense to switch to a disto > > with what I need in the base system, such as one of the BSDs (and not > > use packages and ports). > > What about Slackware? >
The slackware book shows the system requirements of 586, 32 MB ram, 1 GB drive space. It says it will install on less with "a little elbow grease". The bare minimum under insall help is what my box has, although drive space is a little tight. Also, slackware uses the 2.4 kernels by default. I have nothing against the 2.4 kernels but what about security auditing? How much longer will 2.4 kernels be patched? By comparision, I installed NetBSD in 10 minutes on a 20 year old 171 MB drive. 10 minutes later networking was configured and I could ssh into it. I know the drive doesn't have the space to compile, but it was only a test. My sense, although I'm open to revision, is that linux is focused on running on newer and newer hardware. Support for older hardware gets left out while newer drivers are built-in by default. Unless, of course, I roll my own. Another sense I have is that all the linux distros use a lot of overhead (disk space, memory, and processing) in maintaing the package management even for the base system. By comparision, the BSDs tarballs drop in. On the other hand, this only holds until a security update requires building something from source, but at least I could do that on another machine. I'm not decided yet and I _will_ try upgrading the 486 from Sarge to Etch, once I've got CD1 for my Athlon box burned. Thanks, Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
