Linux on 386/486 PCs

I used this when I was running a donated 486 with only 8MB of RAM in about 1998? I was poor.Fond memories.

I remember when I could (and did) run Linux on a 486 with 8MB of RAM and 200MB of HD. Ran X11, fvwm, emacs, Netscape. It used to be possible. These things were done in the 90s :-)

Why'd you run it through Windows? I had a 33Mhz 386 and 2 (4?) MB of ram. I made a boot disk, and it worked fine.

Yes, you're right. I don't know if you can see this: https://i.redd.it/vtswj6s8wh321.jpgBut what it says is that it required 24MB of HDD (12MB after installation), and a 386 or equivalent computer. An i386 is quite powerful, to be honest. It even has protected mode!And, 4MB RAM, which is more than what I had on my 286 laptop back in the day.

I remember doing that on some 386 w/4MB RAM.

I ran X and emacs and gcc on a 386DX with 5MB of RAM circa 1993, and while not pleasant it was workable. The upgrade to 16MB (that cost me £600!) made a big difference.

In 1992 (or 1993 ?), I had a 486DX33 with 16 Mb of memory and 120Mb HD running linux 0.99pl12 at resolution 1152x900. It was very confortable, no problem for compiling kernel while playing tetris.

My first x86 machine (after running a 68000 Atari ST for years before) was a 486DX50 and I ran the first versions of Linux (pre-ELF), 1993ish, installing off floppy, downloaded via 9600 baud modem. Dual booted with Windows 3.1 and DOS.It's nice to see recent kernel versions can still work fairly well on this hardware. I don't recall my boot times being as long as 50s though. But who knows, it was a different time and expectations were different. I had 8MB RAM and a 200MB drive and w

No kidding. I'm reasonably certain I played it on a 33MHz 386 with a couple megabytes of ram.

Same for me. My PC was a 8086 running at 4.77Mhz, with 640Kb memory, 20Mb HDD and EGA graphics. Surprisely Keen Dreams ran perfectly well on that very slow hardware...a testament to the software engineering back then.