Re: [Rule-list] Red Hat No Longer Supports 486

[Eugene Wong]

Hi all.

I'd thought that I would just chime in here. I believe that it would be wise 
to create two seperate projects. One will focus on creating an installer 
with an already established distribution, and another will focus on creating 
a whole new distribution from scratch.

I believe that it is important to have an installer compatible with an 
already established distribution, because it helps us to have access to new 
software an drivers, etc. Another suggestion for a distribution would be 
Gentoo. I realize that it takes us a lot of space, but if we could get it 
under 400MB for an installation, then I think that we would be doing very 
well, because there are a lot of advantages to their package management 
system. If I wanted to install mutt, it would install all the dependencies. 
However, if I uninstall it, it would uninstall the depenedencies too, unless 
they are required for something else. I just find their system gave me much 
less hassle than trying to install RH7.* from rpms, not to mention that 
their documentation is very well written, in my opinion. Regarding 
Slackware, the fellow was right when he said that it isn't much harder than 
trying to install by Slinky. After all, Slinky doesn't detect hardware. 
Another interesting thing to consider is who will use this. Most 
non-technical people these days, will probably consider a Pentium II with 
128MB of RAM to be "old" hardware. I would consider it luxury. So, I assume 
that there aren't going to be many non-technical people using Slinky. If 
that is true, then we should feel free to use distributions that would 
require a bit of knowlege in installations.


There is advantage to having a compeletely seperate installation altogether, 
because it lets us optimize according to our outdated hardware, as well as 
how we intend to use it. I'd be very greatful for a minimal install that 
lets me read email from mutt, and allows me to read man pages, info, etc. I 
guess I could do that now, but I'd like to do it with newer stuff. One 
important thing about having our own distribution is that it allows us to 
progress at our own pace. It seems that Michael is always playing catch up 
with every new distro release.

I'd appreciate hearing thoughts on these ideas.


Sincerely, and with thanks,
Eugene T.S. Wong

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