[Coco] Keeping current... ????

[Joel Ewy]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 February 2007, John W. Linville wrote:
>   
>> On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 03:07:44AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>     
>>> I don't think a 486 has ever run linux unless it was some variety of
>>> ucLinux, its missing a memory manager that linux depends on.
>>>       
>> Not had your coffee yet this morning, Gene?  Keep this up, and your
>> LKML posting privileges will be revoked... :-)
>>
>> John
>>     
>
> Ok, when was the last time linux ran on a 486?  When gcc was at V-2.7.2 
> maybe.  And vz started bouncing lkml messages about a week ago, so now 
> I'm subbed thru a gmail address. If there was another game in town, I'd 
> be gone from vz customer list quicker than stink in a whirlwind.  Jerks.
>
>   
I ran RedHat 5.2 on an NEC Versa laptop w/ 486-25 and 20M RAM.  It ran
FVWM95 quite comfortably.  Netscape 4 and WordPerfect 8 for Linux were
very usable on this machine.  AFIK all '486 chips have the MMU features
that Linux needs.  The '486SX doesn't have an FPU, but x86 FPU emulation
in the Linux kernel has always worked well enough for general use,
unlike the FPU emulation on the m68k.

I'm pretty sure DSL, which uses 2.4 kernels, is reputed to run on a
'486.  I haven't yet tried that myself, but now I guess I'd better.  :)

JCE