Currently the i386 kernel has support for Math Emulation built in, this makes the kernel usable with a 386 that doesnt have a 387 math co-processor, and a 486sx that doesnt have the 487dx math co-processor. Math Emulation adds 28kB to the size of the kernel, this would be a good savings if we can get it. I think the practical memory requirements for a default install will be 8MB (or possibly even 16MB). Of the 386/486sx's that are about, many of them wouldnt meet those minimum memory requirments, so they would need to be treated as a special case. So how do this sound for a plan. - i386 hardware requirments for the default debian-installer, 486DX or better, 8MB of memory. - For i386 hardware that doesnt meet the minimum requirments of the default installer we use a special "legacy" flavour of the installer, which is designed for absolute minimum hardware. This legacy flavour could use cramfs or squashfs and be compiled with Math Emulation support. Comments ? Glenn
Attachment:
pgp1zWr4yxIoB.pgp
Description: PGP signature