shane wrote: >On Monday 06 May 2002 14:55, Michael Adams opened a general hailing >frequency and transmitted to all open stations: > >>>>Mandrake won't run on a 486 or 386 as it is compiled for pentiums. I >>>>beleive there is a 486 distro downloadable (from memory). >>>> >>>Thanks for the info, much appreciated. Will see what I can find in the >>>'net. skinky >>> >>There was a thread on that 486 distro either last year or very eary this >>year try the newbie-archives. Alternatively, redhat is compiled AFAIK to >>run on 386 or better. <Michael ducks for cover after suggesting >>altenative distro> >> > >you better bucky! :P > >seriously, does it matter? i mean try and run XP on a 486, then realize >there is a reason we are fooling with linux... > >depending on what you want the machine to do, either >http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Linux/Distributions/ >or >http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Linux/Distributions/Tiny/ >may be a big help to you. > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? >Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com > mandrake, stampede, and enoch are compiled for more recent processors, while most other distros stick with 386.
I guess the real difference will come with the hammer-core processors which are x86 compatible unlike IA-64, but have significant enhancements beyond the 64-bit wideness. There a compile for a 16-year-old processor will certainly not compete with one for the actual processor itself. For the Pentium and 686-style procesors, the difference is slight, and sometimes the 686 compile runs slower. Early results compiling exclusively for Athlon show some gains over the pentium compile, but not enough to justify the expense of separate maintenance. The Opteron will likely be a much different story. Civileme There is a version of mandrake (7.0 and it is a beta at that) for 486s. There are also 7.1 versions for SPARC and Alpha processors(also beta versions with no final). The market demand was so slight, none were justified to be continued
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
