[CentOS] CentOS 2.1 on i586

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Quoting Dag Wieers <dag at wieers.com>:

> What exactly is causing anything lower than i686 to fail ? If it is
> anaconda, CentOS could patch it slightly. If it is the kernel, we could
> build a i386 one ?
>
> Not sure if we want to do this. What are the arguments for and against
> this ? I do see some benefit to have RHEL2.1 and even RHEL3 to work   
> on < i686.

First, thanks to everybody who replied so far.  Instead of sending  
dozen individual replies to the list, I'll just summarize all in one  
email.

There's no point in allocating resources to make 2.1 run on i586.  I'd  
probably be the only user of it.  But if somebody wants to do it just  
for fun, I'd be happy to do couple of reinstalls on my laptop ;-)

The only reason I attempted install was because it was an old laptop  
(Pentium MMX 233 MHz, 256 megs of RAM, 4 GB hard drive).  A bit more  
lightweight desktop of 2.1 and smaller install size would probably be  
a better fit than 3.8 (or 4.4).  Even with 256 of RAM, MMX is still  
slow CPU (by todays standards, compared to i486 it was lighting fast).

Given the disk size, selecting the "Workstation" installation on 3.8  
gives you "not enough disk space" error.  I used to have 40 GB drive  
in that laptop, but it died (hence the reinstall), and I dag out the  
original old 4GB disk.

CentOS 3 and 4 do install nicely on i586.  Actually, I have another  
i586 box that I use at home as firewall, running CentOS 4 (it used to  
run Fedora Core 1 and 2 before that).  I bought two of them for couple  
of dollars on garage sale couple of years ago, and it has been running  
very nicely since.  Thanks to everybody who put work to make CentOS 4  
run on such an old box.

On the laptop, I've simply gave up from 2.1 and installed 3.8.  It  
seems to be running OK, there's still couple of problems to sort out.   
It doesn't detect sound chip, and for whatever reason runs the video  
card in 800x600 SVGA mode, instead of 1024x768 (however, it does  
detect correct graphics chip).  So the screen looks a bit weird.  I'll  
sort those out as soon as I find some time to play with it.  I do  
remember that CentOS 4 didn't had those problems (I had it installed  
on this same laptop long time ago, than wiped it out since it was too  
slow).

-- 
NOTICE: If you are not intended recipient, you are hereby notified
that by reading this message you agreed not to disturb frogs during
mating season.  For more info, visit http://www.8-P.ca/