Ian wrote:
Hi,
Hello :)
I have a number of 486 machines. They have very little memory
16M or less. My interest is to make a version of Linux to
run a few programs on these, particularly the mail program
Mutt and Midnight Commander; no X stuff. I need to keep
well below 100M drive space.
I now have the LFS live CD and theres a Pentium 400MHz I can
use for compilation. What Id like to know before I start is
whether this is going to be a rather too difficult task
for someone who is not very experienced with Linux and
up till now has never compiled a kernel. I suspect Im
going to have to whittle the kernal down a great deal
before it will be ok for these old machines. Is this
viable?
Anything goes, right? My guess is, it will work.
First of all I would think about replacing Glibc with uClibc to get the
memory and binary footprint as small as possible.
Use compiler flags to optimize for size (-Os I think), and possibly the
uname_ix86 kernel hack, so you don't have to struggle with
cross-compiling (It will make your pentium look like an 486 by inserting
a kernel module).
Figure out excactly what hardware's in your boxes, and comile the kernel
with the bare minimum needed.
When all is done, you'd have to strip down the system to fit your
harddrives, I guess that'll be the hardest work.
Have a look at HLFS for some tip about uClibc, and the stripped-down LFS
hint, to get started.
Is this the right place for this enquiry?
There's also some other distros that might suit your need, but if you
prefer compiling from source this is the right place to be. For me, it's
been the most awarding Linux experience ever, but it's also been a tough
road. I would recommend it to everyone who wants to get to know Linux.
Good Luck!
--Tor Olav
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