Hi John,
> Has anyone tried or know of anyone
> who has tried to squeeze a basic linux system onto
> a '386 w/2 megs of ram and a 65 meg hd ?? (grin:-)
>
Yup, I did (try ;-)...
I installed a PS/2 notebook w/ 2 Megs Ram and 40 Megs HD
with a slackware 3 distribution.
The standard installation procedure requires more memory,
I used a standard 4 Megs Sim in the memory expansion
slot and it worked (Ibm said it was not standard memory,
which is true as a BIOS error appears at boot time, but
the 6 megs are there anyway).
Then make sure to remove all the deamon processes you
don't need (actually you need very few of them...), and
if you borowed the memory Sim, give it back ;-)
Though if you can keep the memory above 4 megs,
it is much better, otherwise with 2 megs, the first "vi"
command you issue, you start swapping.
The boot time frompower on to login prompt is rather
short with 6 megs, with 2 megs it is real slow... (swap)
I applied to the "slowest Linux machine in the world
contest" : 2 BogoMips with this 386SX16 low power Chip !
> This will act as a portable terminal only for amateur radio.
> Obviously X is not an option.
>
It's been a perfect Linux AX25 server for months, 24/24 H,
low noise (HD spin down), low power and httpd, smtp and
so and so.
> I'm gonna give it a shot, but I was curious if anyone has ever
> tried it and found out whether it was a waste of time or not.
>
Nope !
> As a terminal, minimal programs and services will be necesary;
> I figure the kernel, mail, telnet, ftp, ax25utils, net-tools and basic
> libs. (if nothing else it will be a learning experience I guess)
>
I forgot, I did not intall X windows ;-)
> Any suggestions, caveats, et al will be greatly appreciated.
Go for it !
73 de f5hnk/Patrick
