From: edmonds@cs.ubc.ca (Brian Edmonds) Subject: Re: Running Linux: What Machines? Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 21:23:19 GMT
mwalker@novell.com (Mel Walker) wrote:
>What is the minimum configuration to reasonably run Linux? I don't mean the
>bare bones minimum. If it can run under 4Meg, but really needs 8, tell me
>8. What graphics cards does it support? What HDs? etc. Does GNU emacs run
>on it? Is it a full/complete un*x, whatever that means? I would really like
>my un*x-clone to hack around with, but I need to know how much I'm going to
>have to spend on PC equipment. Right now I only have a Mac, so I'll be
>starting from scratch.
Well, from my experience, and what I've seen of others posting here,
the _minimum_ configuration is a 386sx/16 with 2M RAM. Although, if
you really want to do any work on it, you'll want 4M RAM, and if you
want to run X reasonably, 8M is about right (running gcc under X I
usually end up swapping about 1M). Speedwise, since you're buying a
new machine, I would think you'd want to go for at least a 386/33,
but a 486/25 isn't that much more, and you get the coprocessor built
in, so it's definitely worth considering. Myself I'm running on a
486/33 with 8M RAM, and find the system a pleasure to use. In terms
of disk space, I have an 80M IDE (16M swap -- growth room), and still
usually have 25M free with GCC and X (with 75dpi fonts) installed, so
you can get by with remarkably little.
In terms of linux' completeness, I use SunOS regularly, and have had
no trouble compiling almost all software that I use regularly on my
linux system. Outside of the current lack of networking support,
linux is as complete as they come from my experience.
======================================================================
Brian Edmonds (MSc CompSci) edmonds@cs.ubc.ca