[Techtalk] A distro for old machines...

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 12:20:37PM +0000 or thereabouts, Bud wrote:
> 
>   I am interested in trying to build a desktop distro that 
> will work on old computers. By old I mean it should work on 
> a P MMX 200Mhz+ with 32MB ram and a 4MB video card. 

techtalk likes this subject, going by the number of threads on 
this. I remember a long thread about it in July of last year:

http://mailman.linuxchix.org/pipermail/techtalk/2002-July/thread.html

...and look for "Thoughts on small boxes" and "Do I even think about
upgrading it?" for a nice round-up. There are probably others, but 
that's the one in my bookmarks. 

It would be nice to hear from the people in that thread whether
they went ahead with some of the ideas and what happened.

> * Would kernel 2.6 be able to work faster (having been 
> customized) or should I stick with 2.4 or even perhaps 
> consider 2.2

There are notes about kernel tweaks in the "Thoughts on small
boxes" post. It was written somewhat before 2.6 though.

> * Would dietlibc be any faster and effectively usable as a 
> replacement for glibc

Looking at http://www.fefe.de/dietlibc/talk.pdf I am not
clear whether you will get a usable X. It's in the "things
to try" section there. That was given in 2001, so things
may have moved on. It doesn't (and won't) support locales,
either. I am not sure, but presume this means no localisation 
(translations and printer paper sizes and stuff like that).

Telsa