Do you have some old 386 or 486 machines lying around, collecting dust, but want them to become productive members of your computer household? Fret no more – there’s gray386linux and gray486linux, distributions specifically tailored for these two older architectures. I’m not entirely sure what you’d actually do with them, but fascinating projects nonetheless.
This is something that’s increasingly necessary. The only mainstream distribution that has any support for Intel processors older than the i686 family is Gentoo, and even then it’s only 486 and newer. I recently put together an old Via Epia machine from parts I had around the house because I had a need for a fanless PC to run some stuff in my bedroom. The Via Epia C3 processors are almost but not quite i686 because they lack support for cmov instruction family. Rather than being able to just throw Debian on it, I had to take over 26 hours to install Gentoo on this 16 year old, and not particularly powerful when new system.
You might with some justification say that I should just get an Intel Atom box or one of the raspberry pi knockoffs that have two ethernet ports to do the job, but since I already had the stuff I think it’s better to use what I have rather than creating more e-waste. A modern binary distribution focused on older hardware would be very welcome.
Via C3 based system like the Epia (800 MHz) is not about “power” but “power efficiency”.
Waving the NetBSD flag, in the interest of completeness.
Sure, some might not consider NetBSD to be “mainstream”, but its i386 port is one of the grand originals.
http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/i386/
This is the way.
OpenBSD has i386 support as well.
https://www.openbsd.org/i386.html
OpenBSD does not run on 386 or 486 anymore.
What’s changed? It’s still listed as a supported architecture, and there are i386 images on the download page.
I guess maybe Slackware isn’t “mainstream” anymore, but it’s certainly a great alternative for 486+ machines:
http://www.slackware.com/install/sysreq.php
I’m certain their is an other way to compile it, similar to a cross compile, by letting an other machine do the work.
Now if we could only get some Linux devs to do the same for AMD APUs as Linux support for APUs? Beyond trash. Its really sad that in 2022 I can get a version of Linux that runs on a fricking 486 but good luck getting a version of Linux that supports Excavator APUs which are still being sold here in the big box stores.
This !
Yet it might depends on AMD’s datasheet availability…
This is the one gaping flaw with trying to go full AMD for non-Windows OSes. I try not to give Intel any money (and keep more for myself) by buying older Intel-based Dell and HP equipment secondhand for running various FOSS things, but my one Windows machine is all AMD.
Speaking of Windows and AMD, don’t even get me started on the fact that a Zen2 based system with 32GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, PCIe 4.0 storage, and a GPU made in 2021 doesn’t meet the requirements for installing Windows 11, an OS that will be the “old version” in less than two years.
This again !
Strange, I as well as millions of others have been running all AMD setups for decades.
0brad0,
I have been running AMD setups (ie ryzen) just fine as well. However I believe everyone here is referring to AMD’s onboard acceleration specifically…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Accelerated_Processing_Unit
This is more common in cheaper desktop and laptop systems without a dedicated GPU. If you search the web, support under linux can be flaky. On intel’s side HD graphics have worked consistently for me under linux. Although I upgrade to discrete graphics for different reasons.
Some hardware accelerators like video encoding / decoding is not the same thing as the system not booting; almost all of the hardware works fine. I have more than enough issues with Intel based systems over the years, they’re far from perfect.
Alfman,
Some AMD APUs are certified for Ubuntu Linux (3700U/3300U here).
For laptops https://ubuntu.com/certified/202104-28929
or thin clients https://ubuntu.com/certified/202002-27758
Or more recent 5800H:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/ovnf2y/ubuntu_2104_runs_surprisingly_well_on_my_slim_pro/
They might now be much better than your previous experience.
There’s a hole in AMD’s GPU support. The AMDGPU driver really only supports chips which are GCN2 or newer. The radeon driver supports GCN1 and older hardware, but it’s kind of spotty since AMD had a proprietary official driver at the time.
Flatland_Spider,
Makes sense. I can see older cards not supported with the new open source driver.
The following mentions they are planning to go as far back as possible, and supporting from HD 7000 cards upwards (which is a 10 year old architecture), but nothing from HD 6000 series or earlier (11+ years old):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AMDGPU-Driver
It makes you wonder. I have an AMD APU running Ubuntu, and an Zen2 desktop running Windows 11 just fine.
Almost like there is thins thing called google where you can find out what is supported by what in like seconds, and you can make an educated decision on what to install and what to purchase.
I just did a search, and no, it’s not that easy. I know what I’m doing, and I had to sift through trash.
Ryzen chips with an iGPU haven’t been super common, and they’ve been pretty lackluster, to be honest.
People can run as many searches as they want, but it’s not going to add hardware to silicon or convince AMD support a product they’re still selling.
You know everyone means 3d accelerated desktop. Don’t be dense.