> Huh? Not to open up a large can of worms here, but in my opinion the ONLY
> reason for ELKS is for something fun for its participants to do. The
> relative utility of 8086-class computers goes down every day. Consider
> that you can buy a used computer with a Pentium 60 with onboard video,
> IDE, serial, and parallel, 16 Mbyte of RAM and a 270 Mbyte hard disk for
> around $75, and run REAL Linux on it (check it out for yourself on any of
> the on-line auction web pages).
I agree partially, that if someone want *real* Unix/Linux functionality a
386 would be an easy way to go, and probably just as cheap. Though, like
some other people have mentioned, ELKS is intended for embeded systems as
well, so I think there is more of a user base than those of us (myself
included) that just want to make use of 8086/8088 based computers. I also
think there is a lot of value in having a fairly simple OS running on
fairly simple hardware for educational reasons too, for hacking value.
While I have to admit I'm one of those people who isn't doing any ELKS
development, my vote is to make ELKS simple enough that it can be more
easily made to run on a wide range of hardware (not just PCs with
a full 640k or memory). While making those 8088 machines usefull again is,
after all, why I joined the list, I don't see any point in trying to make
an ELKS machine into a full blown Linux machine. Just my 2 cents worth.
Dan
