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

[Colin Mattoon]

On Sun, 20 Oct 2002 13:51:04 -0500
Glen Lee Edwards <glen at fcwm.org> wrote:<and I clipped>

> "But long term we're going to 
> be forced into either buying new hardware or going with a different 
> Linux distro."

But that's what I suggested: Perhaps it would be preferable to abandon Red Hat as the base distribution for the Rule Project and select something like Slackware. Then, work on making the Slackware/Rule-Project compatible with Red Hat RPMs.

Again, I don't know if this is feasible. But it seems to me that if the point of beginning is a distribution that is roughly equivalent to Red Hat in terms of package versions, AND that is already compatible with low tier hardware, it might be easier to make that distribution (ie., Slackware) compatible with Red Hat, than it will be to continue to try and make each new release of Red Hat compatible with lower tier hardware.

Slackware already has a mature installation utility that works with the hardware the Rule Project is targeting. It doesn't need much RAM and it's relatively easy to shoehorn a Slackware installation into a small hard drive. Slackware is modern and supports journaling file systems, 2.4 series kernels, XFree86 4.2 and up-to-date versions of the most popular desktop environments. For old video adaptors (some aren't well unsupported by X4) it's relatively easy to rip out X4 and substitute X3. In terms of user difficulty, installation of Slackware is about the same as installing Red Hat with miniconda -- except that since the installer has been through years of refinement, it rarely crashes.

In addition, I believe Slackware outperforms recent Red Hat releases on 80386DX through first generation Pentium systems. I attribute this to compilation of all packages for i386, without any i686 optimizations.

But Slackware lacks good support for Red Hat RPMs. RPM is included with the Slackware distribution, however it's a bit difficult to use in many cases. My thought was, if the effort went into some custom installation instructions to prepare a minimalistic Slackware base installation for Red Hat RPMs, with some cleanup of RPM support on Slackware as an "add on," the same end result could be achieved.

Which is, after all, the main purpose of the Rule-Project as I understand it:  A modern and up-to-date Linux system that runs on minimal hardware and is compatible with the nearly ubiquitous RPM package format.

In one sense, trying to continually overcome Red Hat's ever-increasing hardware requirement is like trying to make a light truck out of a Ferrari. It can probably be done, but why not start with an existing truck chassis and customize it to meet the need? Red Hat introduced 8.0 before miniconda was perfected for 7.3. In a few months, they'll bring out Red Hat 8.1 or  9.0. What then -- 128 MB RAM and i686 for a text based install? 

In stark contrast, Slackware only recently upped their RAM requirement to 16 MB, and frankly, there are workarounds to that. 

And, this is all just an idea. Might not be workable, and might not even be a good idea. Just thought I should mention it.

Later,

Colin Mattoon 



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