[Rule-list] About RH 8 not supporting 486

[Michael Fratoni]

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On Monday 21 October 2002 06:17 pm, Marco Fioretti wrote:
> Hello, everybody!

Hello Marco,
Well said overall, specific comments included in-line.

> Man, one cannot go to bed early *one* night without his favourite
> project being sabotaged by some corporation...  :-)

I hate when that happens. ;)
Imagine my suprise while testing slinky for 8.0 when lilo failed to 
install on the MBR. Switching to vt2, I found an empty /boot/ directory. 
It was at this point that i posted my mail to the Valhalla list.

> Any feedback is ... due, more than welcome, isn't it?
> (even because the final form of the text below will almost *have* to
> end up on the web site as the "official" position of the project,
> right?)

It should be posted on the web site, I couldn't agree more.

> Why did this happen?
>
>         If a 386 CPU is the base line, there are really a _lot_ of
>         combinations of CPU, main boards and peripherals to consider.
>         Red Hat is a for profit company: it is just natural, and
>         perfectly reasonable, that they focus on, optimize for, and
>         support, the hardware used by the majority of their paying
>         users.

I agree, from Red Hat's position, it makes sense to remove the i386 
kernel. They have made it clear they don't support the i386 and i486 
hardware. I don't agree with the fact that the release notes make no 
mention of the i386 kernel being removed.

> Why is it bad?
>
>         Of course, this means that running the latest Red Hat on
>         obsolete hardware just a bit more difficult: the RULE project
>         home page and FAQ already explain in detail why this is not an
>         irrelevant or good thing.

One other reason this is bad. Right now, we are creating an installer for 
the official version of Red Hat Linux. We are not packaging a 
distribution, or distributing a modified Red Hat distribution. No 
trademark issues to worry about, as the installers require the official 
Red Hat installation media.

> What should Red Hat do?
>
>         As already mentioned, there is no point in asking to RH
>         official support for old hardware. We really hope, however,
>         that Red Hat:
>
>         o   will keep a 386 kernel around, both on the updates server,
>         and in the official CDs starting from 8.1 (others have already
>         noted that space is not really an issue here: just put a huge
>         UNSUPPORTED label on it, and keep going)

I'm not at all hopeful of the i386 kernel being included on the install 
media in the future. For the time being, we may get official i386 kernel 
updates. I'm not sure I expect that to continue either.

> What should Red Hat users do?
>
>         Nothing, if they are satisfied with the performances of their
>         box.

I disagree.
I think Red hat users should request the inclusion of an i386 kernel, 
regardless of what kernel they need to use on their own machines.

> What should the RULE project do?
>
>         Michael Fratoni, excellent as always, has already announced
>         some workarounds and future plans to deal with this issue. In
>         parallel, others have asked to just switch to another
>         distibution as the base for the project, and/or to start a new
>         one from scratch.
>
> 	My thoughts on this issue (when I say "we" I count myself in,
> 	of course!):
>
> 	1) I'M HAPPY THAT RH KICKED OUR BUTT, causing more people talk
>            on the list these days: maybe we've been counting on
>            Michael working for us a bit too much (including myself)

I do like to see the list busy. Other than that, I enjoy working on both 
slinky and Miniconda. Don't worry about that. I am working on a complete 
rewrite of "slinky" at present. Details later, after I make a little more 
progress.

> 	2) Judging from the number of list members (~100) and from the
> 	   average time we talk on this list we still have not enough
> 	   mass/average competence/free time/whatever to create and
> 	   above all maintain a whole distro from scratch (if I'm
> 	   wrong, just tell me, and I'd be really happy!)

While we could, in theory, repackage the packages we need and distribute a 
mini distro, there are some significant issues that would need to be 
resolved. Just for an easy one off the top of my head, bandwidth. Who's 
going to host it, and where? 

> 	4) **Personally**, I will continue to work for RULE on RH
> 	   because I have no spare HW, and because I have to use only
> 	   RH Linux in my paid job, and hope that Michael will keep
> 	   miniconda and slinky current, since without them RH on old
> 	   HW is impossible from the beginning. Another important
> 	   reason to stay with RH (IMHO) is the one pointed out by
> 	   Colin, i.e. to remember to an important corporation that
> 	   there are people who cannot afford the full thing, and that
> 	   RH should at the very least not make their life
> 	   deliberately harder.

I'm in agreement. I use Red Hat, and have since the 5.1 release. I'm 
familiar with and like the product. I'll continue to support them where 
possible.

> 	6) Summarizing, I highly recommend that, at least for the
>            short/medium term, we keep RH as the base distro: again,
>            for very pragmatical reasons (old Winston used to say
> 	   "slowly but surely"), not to start yet another
>            distro war on what is a side issue, after all

Our installers, as mentioned earlier, are installers for Red Hat linux. As 
long as an official i386 kernel is available, this remains true. The 
problem I see, is that should an official kernel not be available, we 
can't make that claim.

> 	8) Somebody mentioned the possible need to just recompile all
> 	   RPMs for i386: much ligther than creating a new distro, but
> 	   fully useful only after sorting out dependencies and
> 	   configuration as already explained. In the meantime, don't
> 	   forget it, and offer to the list a script to do it
> 	   automatically from a base RH install with gcc only, and
> 	   stock source CDs...

Assuming a compatible kernel to get the machine running, recompiling from 
source is a possibility. However, I did some testing on a P-166, and did 
a kernel compile in 8M of RAM. After 24 hours, I killed the process so I 
could use the box for further install testing. :) Recompiling and 
distributing the binaries seems more plausible, however, there is still 
the bandwidth/hosting (Or other distribution method) issue to contend 
with. 

However, just as a test, I think I am going to put together a "slinky" 
based i386 RULE-linux CD. ;)

- -- 
- -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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