I have a 486DX2 at 66 that I have as pet project to mess with Windows 95, MSDOS and S.u.S.E. Linux 5.3 . SuSE 5.3 was my first full distro (the whole pack of 6 cdroms), and I had good memories of how was easy to install stuff with YaST.
I could try to upgrade to the mighty Am486DX5 at 133. I managed to get one, but I need to mod the MBO to give the low voltage required by it. The MBO it's prepared to it, but don't have populated the regulator...
Modern Linux can't even scratch a 486 and some Motorola platforms. Or VAX. Heck, I run NetBSD 10.1 vanilla under simh 3.8 for 9front emulated on an amd64 laptop (old Celeron, 2GB). Slow, but enough to play Slashem.
On portability on compilers, plan9/9front it's unbeatable. Do you now Go compiling from any OS to any arch? The same here, but just for an OS obviously. Albeit I can still run Golang under i386, and tools like Rclone under 9front i386.
That's really cool.
That's a very limited view of what portability means.
Driver support for a niche SoC? Good luck getting NetBSD on before Linux. The sheer amount of SoCs supported by the Linux kernel dwarfs anything NetBSD has to offer.
And NetBSD is missing support for an order of magnitude more SoCs. I like NetBSD. I've run it on several systems in the past, and not just as a toy. I like the whole BSD family, and even deploy FreeBSD in production at work, and use OpenBSD on my home router. But NetBSD's claim as the most portable OS doesn't hold up these days.
I have a 486DX2 at 66 that I have as pet project to mess with Windows 95, MSDOS and S.u.S.E. Linux 5.3 . SuSE 5.3 was my first full distro (the whole pack of 6 cdroms), and I had good memories of how was easy to install stuff with YaST.
I could try to upgrade to the mighty Am486DX5 at 133. I managed to get one, but I need to mod the MBO to give the low voltage required by it. The MBO it's prepared to it, but don't have populated the regulator...
> most portable os
Eh... I think the Linux kernel + your choice of libc/userland has it beat these days.
The Linux kernel dropped 386 support fourteen years ago.
https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/12/linux_no_longer_runs_...
I'm well aware, thank you. I'm not contesting ability to run on a 386, I'm contesting the title of "most portable OS".
1 reply →
Modern Linux can't even scratch a 486 and some Motorola platforms. Or VAX. Heck, I run NetBSD 10.1 vanilla under simh 3.8 for 9front emulated on an amd64 laptop (old Celeron, 2GB). Slow, but enough to play Slashem.
On portability on compilers, plan9/9front it's unbeatable. Do you now Go compiling from any OS to any arch? The same here, but just for an OS obviously. Albeit I can still run Golang under i386, and tools like Rclone under 9front i386. That's really cool.
That's a very limited view of what portability means.
Driver support for a niche SoC? Good luck getting NetBSD on before Linux. The sheer amount of SoCs supported by the Linux kernel dwarfs anything NetBSD has to offer.
5 replies →
Modern Linux dropped support for a lot of old and niche CPUs.
And NetBSD is missing support for an order of magnitude more SoCs. I like NetBSD. I've run it on several systems in the past, and not just as a toy. I like the whole BSD family, and even deploy FreeBSD in production at work, and use OpenBSD on my home router. But NetBSD's claim as the most portable OS doesn't hold up these days.