Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!news.uoknor.edu!ns1.nodak.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!news.clark.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!xlink.net!zib-berlin.de!netmbx.de!Germany.EU.net!EU.net!ieunet!news.ieunet.ie!jkh From: jkh@whisker.lotus.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.apps Subject: Re: Great Expectation Date: 11 Jan 1994 17:56:00 GMT Organization: Dublin, Ireland Lines: 32 Distribution: world Message-ID: <JKH.94Jan11175600@whisker.lotus.ie> References: <CJEson.M2w@eng_ser1.ie.cuhk.hk> NNTP-Posting-Host: whisker.hubbard.ie In-reply-to: hkng2@cuse1.se.cuhk.hk's message of Mon, 10 Jan 1994 10:19:35 GMT In article <CJEson.M2w@eng_ser1.ie.cuhk.hk> hkng2@cuse1.se.cuhk.hk (Ng Hin-Kwong Benson) writes: Someone told me FreeBSD no longer support 4MB 486. Is it true? In FreeBSD 1.0, there were problems using gcc2 to compile the world on 4MB machines. This was caused by some limitations of 1.0 hitting smack against the rather large memory requirements of gcc2. FreeBSD has since been updated to more efficiently use 4MB machines, and I'm told that it works quite well now (I don't have a 4MB machine around myself to test, though Rod & David have run a number of tests of their own). BSD is good but what's the point if I cant even use it with 4MB ram in even just a text mode?! You CAN use 1.0 in text mode, just don't try to recompile everything! If you're just compiling relatively small programs, or using it for exploration and editing, you'll probably motor along quite happily. That said, If you want to make more serious use of your machine with 4MB, then you should wait for FreeBSD 1.0.3 or FreeBSD 1.1 to come out (1.0.3 is an imminently planned update, while 1.1 is slated for the March time frame). It should also be noted that 4MB is unrealistic for just about ANY flavor of UNIX, excepting perhaps those designed to be _small_ from the ground up, like MINIX or Coherent. FreeBSD is not Coherent, and probably never will be. If you're looking for something really stripped down, you're probably looking in the wrong place. Buy Coherent, it's only $99! Jordan -- (Jordan K. Hubbard) jkh@violet.berkeley.edu, jkh@al.org, jkh@whisker.lotus.ie FreeBSD Core Team, American Liver Association, Hedgehog Breeders Society