On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 07:49:48AM +0000, Steven C. Darnold wrote: > > Question - Does this version of BasicLinux use a standard > > Slackware kernel? > > Yes. It's the lowmem kernel from Slackware 4.0. I tried > the lowmem kernel from Slackware 8.1 but it was *much* > bigger and crashed one of my old PCs!
The lowmem 2.4 kernel from Slack 8.1 works on my test PC with 8 meg ram, but bare.i does not. It seems to me that the lowmem kernels don't have TCP support (domain sockets), so I am now using bare.i from 4.0. So far, all the programs from the current distribution seem to work. I have proftpd set up so I won't have to use the DOS partition to install more stuff. There might be a kernel in between that I can use. I guess it's just a matter of trying them out, which is pretty easy to do with Slackware. > > The docs say that 12 meg ram is required. > > This unfortunately is now the norm for non-GUI installs > running from a ramdisk. There just isn't room in 8mb RAM > for a larger kernel, larger libraries, larger binaries and > a complicated installation routine. That's why I used an > old kernel, old libraries, busybox and a minimal installation > routine. The Linux kernels just keep getting bigger. This seems to be a major stumbling block for old systems. Most of the current so-called "mini" distributions seem to have very large memory requirements. Frankly, I wasn't that crazy about busybox in BL 1.7 - a lot of the command switches seem to be missing. Once I had BL installed to my harddrive, I replaced several busybox commands with the full ones from the Slack 3.5 CD. > > I've just downloaded kernel-modules (a biggie) and modutils. > > The module package is huge! That's why I left it out of the > basic installation. Going from 26mb to 35mb just didn't seem > worth it. Now that I'm using the older kernel, I don't need the big tarball. I can just grab the few small modules that I need. > Moreover, all of the packages in the basic install > are small enough to fit on a floppy (it is possible to do the > install from 9 floppies). A floppy install may be the only > alternative for an old PC with no CDrom. This may be especially true for old laptops. Howard E. To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
