techknowmag.com (and older computers)

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Eric Battersby <gyre-Ja3L+HSX0kI at public.gmane.org>

| Can someone clarify for me: what is an "older computer"?

Probably not.  It is a generalization.  The actual attributes that
matter are not determined by a clock.

| Which new distributions should not be installed on which hardware?
| No need to mention extremes, but what are the cut-off specification
| ranges in terms of non-obvious attributes?

What non-obvious attributes do you think matter?

The x86 architecture underwent modest changes at each step from 386 to
486 to Pentium to Pentium Pro to Pentium II to Pentium 3 to Pentium 4.
Some distros (and I had thought F11 was one) may require PII
instructions (aka 686).

I have a machine that boots Fedora Core 2 (I think) and in the process
the kernel whines that the BIOS is old enough that it doesn't trust
the ACPI.

Old machines have ISA and all that means (no sharing of IRQs,
autodiscovery of devices is hard).

| That threshold goes back to computers before 2000, but there
| is *no* mention of *age*.
| I don't think adequate testing has been done on
| "older computers", especially for Fedora.

Why would age itself matter?
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists