Oldest CPU

[champted]

What is the oldest CPU with which Unity Linux is intended to run?

I have a Compaq Armada 1573DM laptop with a Pentium-MMX CPU.  It will run DSL, Puppy, and Vector to some degree or other.  I intend to try Debian on it eventually, but the Unity project looks like it might be more manageable for the size of what I want to do with the laptop.

[KDulcimer]

Sounds like you want TinyMe. Unity is not targeted at the end user; TinyMe is. Furthermore, Unity comes with a i686 (Pentium II) or better kernel, whereas TinyMe comes with a i586 (Pentium Pro) or better kernel.

http://tinymelinux.com/

[champted]

Hi KDulcimer, and thankx for the quick response.

Sounds like you want TinyMe. Unity is not targeted at the end user; TinyMe is.

Well, actually, what I have in mind is to make a small distribution that would run on what I call a "classic" Pentium CPU (pre-Pro, pre-II), would have the lightest-weight useful GUI I could run, and would still allow people to do e-mail, browse the Web, and have a word-processing program of some kind, in a way that preserves the way Linux is "normally" run (maintaining the usual file system setup, not running as root, etc.).  Kinda like Absolute Linux was before Paul Sherman decided not to support the ancient CPUs anymore.  (I'm not bad-mouthing him, he had good reasons.)

I just figured that Unity might be a candidate for the base for my putative distro, for which my Armada laptop would be the test-bed.  But in view of:

... Unity comes with a i686 (Pentium II) or better kernel ...

I guess that dog don't hunt <grin>.

I realize I have other alternatives (Linux From Scratch, Debian, Slackware, etc.); I just was thinking that using Unity as the base might save me some time and effort.

... TinyMe comes with a i586 (Pentium Pro) or better kernel.

Thankx for the CPU info for both distributions.  (I have used TinyMe and I like it, but it doesn't boot on my Armada.)

[KDulcimer]

What you're wanting to start sounds an awful lot like TinyMe. Can you tell me how what you're wanting to do is different from TinyMe?

[champted]

I am aiming to make a distro that will run on a Pentium that is older than a Pro or a II.  As you pointed out,

... TinyMe comes with a i586 (Pentium Pro) or better kernel.

[gettinther]

I guess you would need to be able to compile the 2.4 latest kernel instead of a 2.6 kernel to support those processors.

You could always try to manually compile it.  You should quickly see if our current compiler toolset is suitable for it

[KDulcimer]

I am aiming to make a distro that will run on a Pentium that is older than a Pro or a II.  As you pointed out,

I believe you would have to recompile every package in the repos in order to do that, or at the very least, the several hundred packages you would want for your remaster. I believe every package is compiled for i586 (Pentium Pro). I could be wrong.

[champted]

Whew, that sounds like a bigger bite than I can chew.  I think that effort would be not worth doing relative to the (probably very small) potential audience for it.

Maybe I oughta re-think my idea.

Thank you, KDulcimer and gettinther, for your inputs.  I think the whole Unity Linux paradigm is a great idea, and I hope it accomplishes what its founders intended.

Best regards,
champted

[gettinther]

Thanks.  Maybe you could ask one of the distros aimed at older CPU such as Vector Linux (http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=vector).  Interestingly they use a 2.6.27 kernel so it might just be a need to recompile the kernel and toolchain.  I am not too sure there of what would be involved to be hones.

[KDulcimer]

You could always give TinyMe a shot on the Pentium I machines. It can't hurt, but Vector or Puppy is probably a better choice.

[mdawkins]

Am I missing something? Pentium I == i586, We compile everything for the i586 arch, minus the main kernel like you have mentioned. It has been awhile since I last tried booting anything on an old P1, but I don't see why if TinyMe works on Pentium Pro/MMX, that it wouldn't work on the P1.

AFAIK, the MMX and Pro chips just had enhancements as far as bigger caches, additional MultiMedia instruction sets, but they were still designed on the same P5/i586 core.

[KDulcimer]

I just seem to recall something about GCC's flags being set to Pentium Pro.

[Turbo_J]

Hope you don't mind my 2 cents.

Quite some time ago I was trying to run Linux on a EPIA and ran into issues with the I586 kernel. This was due to some of the flags for the Cyrix processor as it emulates part of the I586 architecture and that was not enough. I'm not saying that's what the problem is; different processor, but it could be flags set during the kernel compile. You may want to look a an i386 kernel. There are some 2.6s out there and it should just take a recompile on unity to make it work. You could also try to recompile the I586 kernel and pick through the menu config and play with some of the settings. It may be a matter of one or two options set in the kernel that's causing comparability issues with that particular processor.

[mdawkins]

Jenna, you're back. Long time no hear. Hope all is well.