> That Debian devel discussion also shows that very few, if anyone, uses a 386; > it also mentions that there were some 486 computers in wide spread use. I> feel Debian should compile to 586 and let the 386 and 486 users have a
Maybe I'm a useless dork, but I've got a hulking solid steel compaq 386 with 8meg of RAM, no sims an expansion card in an 8bit ISA slot, running debian and I think that is really cool.
I say make a "x86-new" that tracks whatever the latest hardware is, and another "port" that's as backwards compataible with old x86 hardware as possible without causing real problems where debian isn't compatible with other linux distros.
I do agree though at somepoint "useless" hardware would have drop out of debian, and enthusiats would have to continue to make subsets of linux that function on the old stuff, like the 286port, etc. Maybe these groups could be somewhat related to debian, but not in the debian autobuilds, the archive, etc. Nothing that would slow up a new release, or use much debian resources (mirror space, cpu, etc, not people as they work on whatever they want to work on).
If someone would pay me I'd like nothing better than port linux to those old RadioShack Xenix boxes.
_________________________________________________________________Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail