alt Hacker NewsOver Christmas I tried to actually build a usable computer from the 32-bit era. Eventually I discovered that the problem isn't really the power of the computer. Computers have been powerful enough for productivity tasks for 20 years, excepting browser-based software.
The two main problems I ran into were 1) software support at the application layer, and 2) video driver support. There is a herculean effort on the part of package maintainers to build software for distros, and no one has been building 32 bit version of software for years, even if it is possible to build from source. There is only a very limited set of software you can use, even CLI software because so many things are built with 64 bit dependencies. Secondly, old video card drivers are being dropped from the kernel. This means all you have is basic VGA "safe-mode" level support, which isn't even fast enough to play an MPEG2. My final try was to install Debian 5, which was period correct and had support for my hardware, but the live CDs of the the time were not hybrid so the ISO could not boot from USB. I didn't have a burner so I finally gave up.
So I think these types of projects are fun for a proof of concept, but unfortunately are never going to give life to old computers.
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"There is a herculean effort on the part of package maintainers to build software for distros, and no one has been building 32 bit version of software for years, even if it is possible to build from source."
This statement must be Linux-only
Pre-compiled packages for i386 are still available for all versions of NetBSD including the current one
I still compile software for i386 from pkgsrc
https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/
NB. I'm not interested in graphical software, I prefer VGA textmode
> Eventually I discovered that the problem isn't really the power of the computer.
Nope, that’s a modern problem. That’s what happens when the js-inmates run the asylum. We get shitty bloated software and 8300 copies of a browser running garage applications written by garbage developers.
I can’t wait to see what LLMs do with that being the bulk of their training.
Exciting!
Try Plop Boot Manager: https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html
It can boot from a floppy or from a CD drive, and it lets you chainload into a live usb even on old computers.
I used it to boot from CD from a floppy in an old Pentium MMX and it worked great (although slow, of course)
I used to run a cs1.6 server on an amd 800mhz with 256mb of ram in the 2000s. I'm looking these days to get a mac mini and while thinking that 16gb will not be enough I remembered about that server. It was a NAT gateway too, had a webserver also with hitstats for the cs server. And it was a popular 16v16 type of server too. What happened? How did we get to 16gb minimum and 32gb will make you not sad.
> There is a herculean effort on the part of package maintainers to build software for distros, and no one has been building 32 bit version of software for years, even if it is possible to build from source. There is only a very limited set of software you can use, even CLI software because so many things are built with 64 bit dependencies
That seems odd? Debian 12 Bullseye (oldstable) has fully supported i386 port. I would expect it to run reasonably well on late 32 bit era systems (Pentium4/AthlonXP)
NetBSD is probably what would make most sense to run on that old hardware.
Alternatively you may have accidently built a great machine for installing FreeDOS to run old DOS games/applications. It does install from USB, but needs BIOS so can't run it on modern PC hardware.
I was on linux as my main driver in the early 2000s an we did watch movies back then, even DVDs. Of course, the formats where not HD and it was DivX or DVD ISOs. I remember running Gentoo and optimizing build flags for mplayer to get it working, at a time I had a 500Mhz Pentium III, later 850Mhz. And I also remember having to tweak the mplayer output driver params to get a good and smooth playback, but it was possible (mplayer -vo xv for Xvideo support). IIRC I got DVD .iso playback to run even on the framebuffer without X running at all (mplayer -vo fb). Also the "-framedrop" flag came in handy (you can do away with a bit less than 25fps when under load). Also, definitely you would need compile-time support for SSE/SSE2 in the CPU. I am not even sure I ever had a GPU that had video decoding support.
My 32 bit laptop is a Thinkpad T42 from 2005 which has a functioning CDROM, and which can run Slackware15 stable 32bit install OKish, so I haven't tried any of this but:
My first thought: How about using a current computer to run qemu then mounting the Lenny iso as an image and installing to a qemu hard drive? Then dd the hard drive image to your 32bit target. (That might need access to a hard drive caddy depending on how you can boot the 32bit target machine, so a 'hardware regress' I suppose).
My second thought: If target machine is bootable from a more recent live linux, try a debootstrap install of a minimal Lenny with networking (assuming you can connect target machine to a network, I'm guessing with a cable rather than wifi). Reboot and install more software as required.
You might have some luck applying isohybrid(1) to the period-correct .iso image, making it bootable by other means: https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/syslinux-utils/isohybrid...
I have a P166 under my desk and once in a blue moon I try to run something on it.
My biggest obstacles are that it doesn't have an ethernet port and that it doesn't have BIOS USB support (although it does have a card with two USB ports).
I've managed to run some small Linux distros on it (I'll definitely try this one), but, you're right, I haven't really found anything useful to run on it.
i had an original 7" eeepc from 2007, running archlinux-32 from ~2017, with Xfce and all that, and few months ago updated it.. took me almost a day, going through various rabbit-holes, like 1-2 static-built pacmans and python and manually picking and combining various versions. The result was okay but somehow took more space than before (it has 4G ssd, from which i did have 2gb free, now only 1.5). But it maybe that is not old enough as machine..
It seems that both OpenBSD [1] and NetBSD [2] still support i386, for example here [3] you can find the image for a USB stick.
I expect at least the base system (including X) to work without big issues (if your hardware is supported), for extra packages you may need a bit of luck.
[1] https://www.openbsd.org/plat.html
>Computers have been powerful enough for productivity tasks for 20 years
Little known fact; before 2006 all we did was play Pong and make beep-boop noises on our computers.
You can always run Linux off the dos partition with vmlinux loader. Or Slackware DOS version (forgot it's name).
Don't lose hope. You can boot it one way or other :)
The last release of NetBSD still has drivers.
> Computers have been powerful enough for productivity tasks for 20 years
It baffles me how usable Office 97 still. I was playing with it recently in a VM to see if it worked as well as I remembered, and it was amazing how packed with features it is considering it's nearing on thirty. There's no accounting for taste but I prefer the old Office UI to the ribbon, there's a boatload of formatting options for Word, there's 3D Word Art that hits me right in the nostalgia, Excel 97 is still very powerful and supports pretty much every feature I use regularly. It's obviously snappy on modern hardware, but I think it was snappy even in 1998.
I'm sure people can enumerate here on the newer features that have come in later editions, and I certainly do not want to diminish your experience if you find all the new stuff useful, but I was just remarkably impressed how much cool stuff was in packed into the software.