Re: support of older compilers

[Andries Brouwer]

# > > There are probably people even using linux-1.2.
# > 
# > # uname -a
# > Linux knuth 1.2.11 #27 Sun Jul 30 03:39:01 MET DST 1995 i486
# > 
# > (486 DX/2, 66MHz, 8 MB)
# > 
# > -rw-r--r--   1 root     root       281572 Jul 30  1995 zImage-1.2.11
# > -rw-r--r--   1 root     root       277476 Apr  1  1995 zImage-1.2.2
# 
# Ok, you da man. What do you use it for? Or is it just lying around for 
# nostalgic reasons?

One strength is the fact that it boots in a couple of seconds, while
my current 2.6.9 with vendor boot scripts takes minutes.
Another strength is the weight - exactly 2 kg.
I write letters, papers, lecture notes and stuff.
It feels faster than modern machines.
Only need X, TeX, emacs and rsh, rcp.

>> to remind us how large the kernel is getting? :)

> Yeah, I know. Damn, it's scary.
> The kernel does do more these days than it did in '95. But 6 times more?

I recall the times where 4K was enough for a multiuser OS that provided
each user its own virtual machine (and could run itself under itself).
Small is beautiful. Six times? Today for me is

-rw-r--r--  1 aeb users 3161708 2004-11-06 01:19 /boot/bzImage-2.6.9test

Probably I select more filesystems than you do.

Andries
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