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14 more items):
Exciting news - I now own a 386 (NEC PowerMate 325) that works... I'm keeping it at 2mb ram even though I could easily upgrade it.
But, it has come to my attention that there is a surprising lack of useful linux boot floppies that will work on a 386 with 2mb ram.
I built linux-2.0.40 using slackware 4.0 (gcc 2.7.2.3), and the basic config I used (usable, but barely) came out to 322kb - and that's enough to do SLIP and PLIP on... However, I believe in giving people the newest stuff possible (and making it so that I don't have to turn on another old computer to build a kernel), so I have some plans for this floppy set:
- linux-2.0.41. Yes, I'm aware that it does not exist - I'm currently working on that, and making great progress. Significant advances over .40 will include gcc4 build support, some backported drivers (particularly network card and squashfs), and stuff like that.
- One floppy just for kernel. The kernel certainly won't fill that - I'll make multiple kernels so you can decide how to install (one with network support, one with old-cd support, a whole set with scsi support, etc. Think back to slackware bootdisks - bare.i, bare.s, etc.).
- One floppy for in-place root. static-linked busybox with the basics, some tools for setting up various things, my init clone, etc. All wrapped up in a nice squashfs wrapper and packed on to a auperformatted (if necessary) floppy. By in-place, I mean no ram wasted on unpacking and running from there - unless I can figure out how to make that optional (so you can load off floppies), but the default will be the version that runs off the floppy.
This project is not forgotten - I'm busting my hump on fixing the dirty kernel code right now (and will be on vacation - away from computers - for a week), so by the end of summer I should have something unfinished but booting.
BTW: for those wondering why not a 2.6 kernel: a 2.6 kernel with no options enabled (completely unusable, but still technically linux) is over 1mb - I think closer to 1.5.
For those wondering why not 2.4: a 2.4 kernel with enough to run and do stuff with is between 1 and 1.5mb.
Compare this to my 322kb pretty usable 2.0 kernel - I'll give more accurate size figures for other configs later, but you get the picture.
State of poly-p-ux
Currently, poly-p-ux (0.20) is usable, in fact, it's on my 486
right now. It is only compiled for 486's, but expect 386 and 586
(Pentium) builds pretty soon (It's pretty easy to set up the
builds, but I'm lazy and I'm dealing with other stuff right now.)
I soon hope to have a modified kernel release (modified from 2.0.40) for
small size, and just enough drivers. This will allow low-ram floppies and builds,
and no funky memory managers or any of that junk getting in the way.
The initial system tarballs unpack to about 7.9mb (486, others vary), but that is a
powerful 7.9mb. It contains
busybox, uclibc, kernel modules for just about every piece of (old)
hardware imaginable, a basic package-management system (with
install and uninstall in-package, and unified check-dependencies),
grub, and much, much more. Yeah, there's some stuff missing, but just look in packages/ !
Overall, it's a decent system right now, and once some more cool stuff
is released as packages, it'll be amazing. Expect difficult
installs, and a few things to work out, but otherwise, it's already
respectable. And, now that I have games released for it, it's already fun!
