Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 17:21:35 +0100 (GMT/BST)
From: Digby Tarvin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: other OS's
>I've just had a Libretto 50 dropped in my lap because its previous owner
>found it too slow. While I agree that 75Mhz and 16 Mb of RAM isn't state of
>the art, I hate the idea of pitching such a cool tool.
>
>My question is thus; what other OS's are out there that can run on this
>limited muscle (Win98 WinNT WinCE RedHat BEOS)?
Most people from the MS world are amazed at how much more powerful
their existing hardware seems when they run Unix on it.
For what its worth, my old (pre-Libretto) Toshiba 1850C laptop, with
386, 4MB ram and 120MB hard disk is running BSD Unix just fine. The
disk is too small to load all the utilities I want, and the screen is
a bit small for X, but the 4MB ram and 386 processor have never
been a problem.
>Next, I'm curious about people's experience with specific MS OS's. I want
>to be practical about this and want to use this to supplement my office
>computer. I doubt that I will be able to convince my employer to change all
>of our computers to Linux!
The only reason I can think of for loading MS OSs is compatibility with
commercial software packages. I have tried W95, W98, W2K and NT4,
and my experience is as follows:
Windows95.
Probably my preferred option (and the only MS OS my Libretto is currently
setup to boot (though I have a spare HD with NT and BSD packed away
somewhere). Most things run on it, and it does all I need.
Windows98.
Hate it. Ignoring the extra disk and memory demands, I find it a complete
backward step from 95. It maybe just me, but the idea of trying to
build system tools from a web browser interface seems unatural,
wastes screen space, and is ugly. I can't help feeling that it was
just a cynical ploy to help justify the bundling of IE so that
they could bankrupt Netscape.
NT4.
A little slow, but more robust than the previous two. Probably a better
option if you want to do software development. However, unfortunately,
it has compatibility problems with a lot of poorly written legacy
(and even some recent) software, which is I guess why it has never
caught on. It is also quite a lot more memory hungry.
W2K.
Combines the worst of the the others. Ok, not quite. But it has NT4's
problems running games and a lot of other software. My impression of it
is that Microsoft have just changed the name of 'NT' to 'Windows' as
a way to force people (who always seem to want to run the latest
versions for some reason...) to use the software they spent so much
money developing.
WinCE.
I have not used this, and don't intend to. I have heard bad things about
it from others - the consensus seems to be that it was well named :-)
I have settled on the W95 that my machine came with. The suspend/resume
gives me close enough to an instant power on for my needs, and it can
run anything that I need to use that isn't available on Linux or BSD.
So in summary, my suggestion would be to upgrade the disk drive if
necessary, and dual boot 95 and either FreeBSD or Linux.
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk
**************************************************************
http://libretto.basiclink.com - Libretto mailing list
http://libretto.basiclink.com/archive - Archives
http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/portable/faq.html - FAQ
-------UNSUBSCRIBE-------
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=cmd:unsubscribe
--------UNSUBSCRIBE DIGEST------
Use above but add DIGEST to the subject line...
**************************************************************
