[Rule-list] Re: i386 kernel not included?

[Colin Mattoon]

On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 09:07:22 -0400
Michael Fratoni <mfratoni at tuxfan.homeip.net> wrote:

Let me apologize in advance for the length of this. Frankly, I don't know how to present this idea in fewer words. Second, let me assure everyone that I don't mean to step on any toes here -- not the Rule-Project developers -- nor Red Hat.

BUT -- with regard to the tremendous leap in hardware requirements for RH 8.0: 

This is something that disappoints me as well. Personally, I believe distributions have some moral/ethical responsibility to help maintain GNU/Linux as an operating system accessible to people without the financial resources of a "Fortune 500" corporation. Besides, by making it more expensive and difficult for the educational system to embrace GNU/Linux, the major distributions are cutting their own throats by reducing the number of graduates who have been using the OS since childhood. It seems to me a practical approach would have been to look at kernel development and adopt, as a primary goal, a plan to support the same hardware subset as the kernel developers continue to support.

The fact is, there's still some Free Software development taking place on hardware that doesn't meet Red Hat's new minimum hardware requirements. Not all volunteer developers can afford up to date hardware. It's not just a problem for the Rule project, although I've never seen a better argument for maintaining backwards hardware compatibility than that articulated at the Rule-project web site.

As a non developer, it occurs to me that there may be some logical approach that doesn't involve "reverse engineering" each new Red Hat release. Because Red Hat attracts the lion's share of development mind share, it remains important that GNU/Linux users be able to install and use binaries compiled for Red Hat and to be able to use the rpm system when necessary. This doesn't necessarily mean, however, that the Rule-Project has to base their work on Red Hat or another rpm based distribution like Caldera, Mandrake or SuSE. Whether by accident or design, all the well known rpm based distributions have permitted their hardware requirements to escalate to a level that I find unreasonable.

I offer the following as a suggestion only: Slackware.  Of the commercial GNU/Linux distributions remaining, Slackware was the first to go to market with a product. In terms of modernity, the Slackware distribution is quite competitive with the more well known varieties. It offers journaling file systems, 2.4 kernels, KDE 3.x, etc. It also retains the ability to install and run on minimal hardware. 

Not only that, but Slackware does provide some rpm compatibility out of the box. And since "official" Slackware packages included with the distribution are compiled for i386, I believe most people will find that 386, 486 and first generation Pentium hardware performs better with Slackware than when the now "out of date" Red Hat 7.3 release is installed...even when the Slackware machine was provided less RAM than required for a "normal" Red Hat installation.

These capabilities are due in part to the Slackware installation utility. It is ncurses based and doesn't rely on autoprobing to the degree Anaconda does. Package selection is accomplished by selecting "disk sets" -- groups of related packages like the "base system," "networking," "development," "X Window System," "Gnome," "KDE," etc., as well as a reasonably well documented procedure to select individual packages for installation within these disk sets. It is quite feasible (and not that difficult) to set up a 486 with 16 MB RAM and a 125 to 150 MB hard drive as a server or X terminal workstation, even if the default EXT3 file system is used, and even if a network installation is performed -- often a requirement on obosolete hardware because there may be no CDROM.  

This is not to suggest that Slackware is a perfect solution, nor that it obviates the need for the Rule-Project. For one thing, when compared to Red Hat, and on hardware compatible with both, the stock Slackware installer does require slightly more knowledge about both the hardware configuration and the role played by various software packages. Not a lot more knowledge, but the requirement is there. Secondly, rpm support on Slackware is a bit primitive and needs some work before it can be credibly claimed to be fully compatible. Third, if PAM is needed for a software package, you have to provide it yourself, because Slackware is NOT a PAM based distro.

But, all in all,  as I look at the Red Hat distribution, slimmed down by Rule to work with minimal hardware, I see an environment not that different than a stock Slackaware installation. It seems to me, that it might be more practical to begin with the Slackware distribution, and provide some custom installation disks (maybe even just some customized instructions), and a few custom packages for installation during a second stage configuration, to provide a Red Hat compatible environment, rather than an actual slimmed downed Red Hat installation.

Even if the Red Hat installation requirements can be overcome, the issue of performance with i686 compiled packages on 386, 486 and 586 processors remains. It almost becomes a necessity to recomile the entire Red Hat distribution. It might be a welcome relief to start with something that doesn't often crash during installation with Sig 11 errors.  

Later,
Colin Mattoon




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> On Saturday 19 October 2002 05:48 am, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> > On Sat, 19 Oct 2002, Michael Fratoni wrote:
> > >Am I missing something, or is there no i386 kernel included on the
> > >distribution cds? I see there is one included with the new updated
> > > kernel packages, but I don't see the i386 kernel anywhere on the CDs.
> >
> > You're correct.  Use one of the i586, i686, or athlon kernels
> > instead.  i386 and i486 class hardware hasn't been supported in
> > Red Hat Linux since Red Hat Linux 7.0 or 6.2 (I don't recall
> > specifically off the top of my head).  An i386 kernel has been
> > supplied, but for reasons other than supporting i386.
> >
> > The minimum system requirements for Red Hat Linux 8.0 are an
> > Intel Pentium or equivalent clone.
> 
> I know i386 isn't supported, hence the existence of the RULE project. It 
> isn't going to be any easier to build the RULE installers without an 
> existing official i386 kernel, since the goal has always been to use the 
> official Red Hat CDs for the install.
> 
> Back to the drawing board... again. ;)
> 
> - -- 
> - -Michael
> 
> pgp key:  http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/gpgkey.txt
> Red Hat Linux 7.{2,3} in 8M of RAM: http://www.rule-project.org/
> - --
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> _______________________________________________
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> 


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