On Apr 15, 2006, at 10:04 AM, Peter Johansson wrote:

>
>> Linux is pretty resource hungry. While CPU is important, memory is 
>> MORE
>> important. Personally, to run FC4 I would recommend a minimum of a
>> Pentium4/AMD Athlon XP and at least 512MB of memory.
>
> Egads!  It's one thing to hear this from ignorant reporters, but
> something entirely different from an engineer!
>
> The Linux *kernel* can still be made to run without much difficulty on
> a 386 with 4 megs of RAM.  It is only the bloated linux-kernel-based
> *distributions* (such as Red Hat and Suse) that have more intensive
> resource requirements.  Other distributions are far less resource
> intensive.

Care to recommend a minimalist linux for running mostly CLI utilities?
X might be ok, but just for Xterms...

I've been looking at running QEMU (x86 emulator for Macs) to get
access to some PIC stuff on my mac, most of which is little more
than DOS programs.  FreeDOS is looking pretty tough to use, so the
next choice is dosemu under a linux, except that I'm only familiar
with "full" unix systems and minimalist task-oriented linux like
system rescue disks.  Something that'll run in 16M of ram from
20M of disk would be just about right...  (I USED to run freebsd
on a real PC with a config not too different from that, so it
ought to be possible...)

BillW

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist