Is not Sabayon dead (not being updated)? Though their google group indicates some activity.

Not anymore, if ever:
https://forums.funtoo.org/topic/4882-fu … ng-forces/

Daniel Robbins is/was the main architect of Gentoo, so expect some improvements to Sabayon when it comes to init systems.

What was the ZX81 worth back then where you come from?

I'm sorry, but I don't remember the price; I just remember that it was far out of my budget. Years later I could buy a Sinclair QL, my first computer.

steve_v wrote:

Yeah, that'll take a while.

Sure, one night; but I was sleeping.

MLEvD wrote:

My dad wrote a home accounting program in 1K on the ZX81.

I wrote software for ZX81, but never could run it because I had no money then to buy one computer, not even that humble ZX81.

What was the ZX81 worth back then where you come from?

I read in wikipedia they were around $100 in 1981 in the US. Goes to show how much a dollar was worth back then.

Yeah, that'll take a while.

Sure, one night; but I was sleeping.

I wrote software for ZX81, but never could run it because I had no money then to buy one computer, not even that humble ZX81.

Two years later, he bought a 16K rampack, Because tax rules changed, not because kids were showing promise on thru the wall.

My first Linux kernel compilation was on a 486 with 4 MB of RAM.

Yeah, that'll take a while.
Dunno if a modern kernel would build on that, it has grown some. Guess I try it next time I have a free week to watch paint dry...

I think you mean 8MB, LOL.

My first Linux kernel compilation was on a 486 with 4 MB of RAM. But it succeded and I was amazed.

bimon wrote:

I played DOOM first time in about 1994 too on a i386 with 8GB of RAM.

I think you mean 8MB, LOL.

Of course, yes
Wonderful how much memory size on modern computers raised since those times.

Cool, thanks

I played DOOM first time in about 1994 too on a i386 with 8GB of RAM.

I think you mean 8MB, LOL. My 386 had 4, and it sure couldn't run Doom. 16MHz CPU, hercules monochrome graphics, and a spacious 80MB HDD.
Another dumpster special, and the first PC I could call "mine".

I still play (GZ)Doom from time to time, and it's still awesome. Fairly sure I have enough WADs to last me until the heat death of the universe too:

~ $ du -ch `find Games/Doom/Mods -iname '*.wad'` | tail -1
3.4G    total

Aside, I highly recommend timidity++ & the soundfonts from arachnosoft for full appreciation of Dooms epic soundtrack.

The more recent install was simply a case of finding I still had enough old parts to assemble a retro box, and doing so for the hell of it.
IBM branded SFF 486 desktop, circa 1994. All the right bits, and worth a surprising amount nowadays as they're starting to become "vintage". Runs a stripped-down Gentoo, dual booting PC-DOS for DooM and Duke Nukem.

I played DOOM first time in about 1994 too on a i386 with 8GB of RAM. I have brought a copy of DOOM game from Novosibirsk summer mathematical school.

May I know, why did you try to use that old hardware?

Because at the time (~2000 - 2003), a hopped-up 486 (120Mhz CPU, unofficial 40MHz bus, 2(!) VLB cards, 32MB RAM) junk-bin special was all I had.

The more recent install was simply a case of finding I still had enough old parts to assemble a retro box, and doing so for the hell of it.
IBM branded SFF 486 desktop, circa 1994. All the right bits, and worth a surprising amount nowadays as they're starting to become "vintage". Runs a stripped-down Gentoo, dual booting PC-DOS for DooM and Duke Nukem.
Ed. One of these. Top spec 100MHz model.

Plenty. The pentium brought many new instructions, as well as widespread PCI bus support.
Multimedia was especially painful on 486-class boxes, if you wanted to play MP3s at realtime you pretty much had to compile mpg123 with special optimisations. MMX changed all that.

Unless you're talking about really specialised embedded boards, there's no reason to use a 486 for anything but a nostalgia trip. i586 is better in every way... Well, except for that embarrasing FPU bug in the early pentium chips of course.

Most late-model 486 boards supported 64MB, but finding compatible SIMMs wasn't particularly easy. 32MB was a lot more common.
I believe there were some server boards that supported 128MB, but I've never actually seen one.

16MB was considered a standard desktop for most of the era, and if you had more than that you usually had to map an address-space hole for the video memory... So although mine had 32MB installed, I could only use 30MB due to my 2MB graphics card. Had to bugger about with kernel patches to get that working too IIRC.

bimon wrote:

Then I can try to build binary packages in Gentoo chroot and install them to physical old hardware?

Or set up the build box as a network binhost, or use distcc. I used to use distcc way back when my main desktop was a 486, with a mighty Pentium 2 downstairs pitching in for compiles.

May I know, why did you try to use that old hardware? Is there any difference between i486 vs i586 in terms of the purpose why you tried this except Pentium having much more RAM available?

i486 is something about 16-64 Mb of RAM and on some boards a few MBs more?

Then they are both good for me only to play with them in VM/chroot.

Personally I don't mind a rolling release as the primary (and only) OS on my desktop, and Gentoo has served me well in that capacity.
The customisation potential isn't just for special-purpose deployments or ricing either, it's being able to have the features you want, rather than what the distro maintainers thought would suit everyone. It's like having your own personal distro, and IMO that's a grand thing on a personal desktop.
FWIW there are two Gentoo branches, and the "stable" one sees very little breakage... Well, less than I remember from Arch anyway.

Each to their own though, I certainly understand the desire for a stable release and I sure wouldn't give a Gentoo box to my gran or deploy it in an office.
I would use Devuan for those, but frankly being a year behind Debian is too stable for me. It just makes too many compatibility problems.

In Gentoo I see some github repo I like the look of, whip up an ebuild in a few minutes, and add it to my local portage tree.
Or just add someone else's overlay.  

Indeed it is. I actually installed current (as of a couple years ago) Gentoo on a 486 DX4-100 not so long ago. It's one of the very few distros that can easily be built with i486 (or i586 for that matter) specific optimisations, LFS + custom scripts being the other common choice. Architecture-specific optimisations make more difference than one might expect on old hardware.

Or set up the build box as a network binhost, or use distcc. I used to use distcc way back when my main desktop was a 486, with a mighty Pentium 2 downstairs pitching in for compiles.

As far as I can see: The point of Archlinux is bleeding-edge software. The point of Gentoo is customisation.

Then they are both good for me only to play with them in VM/chroot.

In Arch I can find something new to try, test, check how it works, and then try to build on Devuan or wait when it is done by someone else.

Gentoo seems good for me to build something small and rare like hardened kernel by @anthrax for currently relatively rare architecture like i586. Such kernel + a few of software like a few base packages and AppArmor could be used on ancient hardware for a text only router or console which from some point of view (say absence of modern backdoors) may be more secure than modern and shiny distros on modern hardware.

Then I can try to build binary packages in Gentoo chroot and  install them to physical old hardware?

I am not sure for what rolling distributions like Gentoo and Arch are good? GUIX seems to be something like rolling too?

Gentoo is a fantastic desktop / workstation / dev box, and it's probably the most flexible GNU/Linux distro ever devised. I wouldn't run it on a server or muggle-kiosk though, it's too needy WRT frequent updates and user-intervention.

Arch is a lot like gentoo in those regards, but without all the customisation that makes Gentoo Gentoo. Unstable, a PITA to update if you don't do it often enough, and additionally I found that it sometimes suffers from binary linking issues if your update server goes out of sync... But it does have much Shiny New Shit and the AUR user-provided packages if that's what you're into.

As far as I can see: The point of Archlinux is bleeding-edge software. The point of Gentoo is customisation.

That was the conclusion I came to when looking for a systemd-free server OS. My standards for such are quite exacting, and revolve around it being well-supported, low-maintenance and receiving regular security patches.
There were very few distros that fit the bill before the systemd invasion (i.e. pretty much Debian or RedHat), and there are fewer still now.

I always thought of Antix as a livecd distro, so I've not considered it.