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Best Operating System on Pentium Gear

Shadow Lord said:
Hey, thanks for this. I am going to have to try this out and see if it'll let me run my monitor caliberation tools on on 98SE. Right now I have to use another computer that boots 2K to do this. Also, do you have linkage for the XP API Support? Thanks!
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I'm pretty sure I linked to that earlier in the thread, too (If I didn't, http://win2kgaming.site90.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7)

Most of the cool 9x modernization stuff I know of comes from the MSFN 9x Member Projects forum, and the 2K stuff comes from the forum at the link I posted for the XP API wrapper.

As for what Old Juul Posted, MINIX sounds interesting, and I hadn't considered BSD, good ideas.
 
Raven said:
I'm pretty sure I linked to that earlier in the thread, too (If I didn't, http://win2kgaming.site90.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7)

Most of the cool 9x modernization stuff I know of comes from the MSFN 9x Member Projects forum, and the 2K stuff comes from the forum at the link I posted for the XP API wrapper.

As for what Old Juul Posted, MINIX sounds interesting, and I hadn't considered BSD, good ideas.
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You indeed had. I was the one who missed it. I'll try installing KernelEx this weekend. I am hoping I'll be successful as the program should run win98SE (no reason for it not to) as long as the drivers install.
 
I've had pretty good luck with KernelEx so far, the only app I haven't had working that I wanted to is Chrome, but that won't even work on 2K, heh.
 
Raven said:
http://win2kgaming.site90.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7

This is the API wrapper for 2K I mentioned (site is great for 2K stuff, they get all kinds of stuff running).

I never really considered early NT (3/4) on my systems because I mostly use my old machines for gaming - usually DOS gaming.

Can you install/boot NT3 or 4 from FAT32? If so I'll totally throw them on some of my Pentium boxes and give them a try to compare performance and see if NTVDM is friendly with DOS games. Perhaps a multiboot of NT and DOS would be ideal, who knows (whole new world just opened up at this thought, lol).
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The NTVDM was notoriously slow, I think because it actually is an emulation layer running 16-bit DOS. One of the big selling points for OS/2 at that time was that it worked much better with DOS programs, mainly because it provided direct APIs to the DOS subsystem, and also gave more options to tune the DOS box. (The same thing applied in general to 16-bit Windows applications). That's one reason it took MS so long to merge their OSes. I know a lot of people found DOS games to work well under OS/2.
 
It'd be interesting to know what actually runs though on the earlier NTs and maybe compile a list of the ones that do run fine. Its a long shot but forcedos may help in some cases.
 
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xp ran nice on my 333 cyrix underclocked to 266 with 64megs of ran and a vodoo 1 16meg video carrd ran that beast till 04 when i got a amd 1100+ cause sim city 4 was to laggy lol
 
Caluser2000 said:
Its purpose is to force programs into dos mode instead of trying the os/2 subsystem.
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This is very useful when you're dealing with a "bound" executable written for a 16-bit version of OS/2 and you're attempting to run it on NT, whose OS/2 subsystem isn't completely compatible with OS/2. But note that this only applies to bound executables (where there are two versions of the same program combined in the same file).
 
Raven said:
What do you all use on your Pentium boxen and why?
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I run SCO UNIX, specifically OpenServer 5.0.7, on a Pentium 166MHz with 96 MB of RAM. It's fast and it's a real Unix with great Internet connectivity. I don't run X Window, however.
 
Raven said:
I have no experience with OS/2 on any box, or Linux on a Pentium box. I've seen that older versions of Linux run well, and obviously someone wouldn't wanna throw Ubuntu 10 on there - would it even handle that?
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The previous release (8.04) will for sure. Try Ubuntu Server, it's a gas.

Recently I've found Debian 5.1 (the latest) to work very well on PI and PII machines. It is also under 300MB. The real killer is in the big programs. Just avoid the bloat of Gnome or KDE for a desktop and use Fluxbox instead - if you even want a window manager that is.

It is interesting that you specified the CPU and not the memory. The importance for running an OS is the other way around because in the end your limitation is going to be memory. CPU speed is not as important. That said; almost any OS can run with low memory, it is applications which can't.
 
I couldn't ever get past Windows 95 on a P1 (and match the speed)...
But you might try Windows FLP.
 
michal said:
But you might try Windows FLP.
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If you can find it.

Personally what also is important is the amount of memory you plan on using. Most of the older P1 chipsets couldn't cache more then 64MB and I wouldn't recommend anything past 98SE on it. W2K isn't well suited for those older computers "for my taste" but in the end, it'll come down to what you want to use and what to use it for.
Yes, you can nlite a W2K-lite edition if W2K's what you want.
If you want "pure" DOS you'll probably be better off using 98SE instead of, say, W2K or ME.

Personally on a rig with 128MB or more I'll use ME as I prefer it over 98SE, but that's just me :p
 
Ole Juul said:
The previous release (8.04) will for sure. Try Ubuntu Server, it's a gas.

Recently I've found Debian 5.1 (the latest) to work very well on PI and PII machines. It is also under 300MB. The real killer is in the big programs. Just avoid the bloat of Gnome or KDE for a desktop and use Fluxbox instead - if you even want a window manager that is.
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One gotcha with Ubuntu server. If you want a static IP, set it up with a static IP from the get-go. I built mine with DHCP, then changed to a static IP once it was ready to go, and now it reverts to DHCP every so often. Not good. It's a known issue, but unfortunately I haven't found an authoritative fix for it.

As for Debian and older systems, yeah. I ran Debian on a P2-450 as my webserver for about 8 years. It wasn't as bad as it sounds.
 
Tetrium said:
W2K isn't well suited for those older computers "for my taste" but in the end, it'll come down to what you want to use and what to use it for.
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Ditto that--I started running 2K on a 100MHz P1 with 96M of memory and still run it on a 233MHz P1 with 128M. As long as you don't "lard it up", it's a pretty fast platform. But when you start adding software that was developed for later systems and CPUs, it can slow down quite a bit.

On systems with larger drives and more than 64MB of memory, 2K is substantially faster for most things than 9x.

On P3 systems, it's my OS of choice if XP compatibility isn't required. It still has a fairly lean kernel that has a lot in common with NT 4. It's all of those add-ons that bogs it down.
 
Dave Farquhar said:
As for Debian and older systems, yeah. I ran Debian on a P2-450 as my webserver for about 8 years. It wasn't as bad as it sounds.
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My personal Intranet server (samba file server, samba print server, outgoing SMTP gateway and public SMTP MX with postfix, IMAP server with UW-IMAP, Squirrelmail web mail, BIND 9 server, SSH server and aMule daemon 24x7) is a Pentium-II with 256 MB of RAM and Debian 3.1 (yeah, I know it's ancient, but I customized it to my needs and works great so I don't feel like upgrading). Also, I'm running it on a laptop so it's **silent** machine!

Code: 
$ uptime
 21:22:07 up 373 days, 17:20,  4 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
$ cat /etc/issue
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 \n \l
$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        256980     244516      12464          0      13232      81620
-/+ buffers/cache:     149664     107316
Swap:       987956      18400     969556
$ uname -srvmo
Linux 2.4.33.2 #2 dom nov 12 17:09:35 CET 2006 i686 GNU/Linux
$ dmesg | grep -i pentium 
CPU: Intel Mobile Pentium II stepping 0a

Stable as heck. No X Window GUI, of course.

Edit to add: and it only reboots from year to year because the building's power fails for longer than its built-in laptop battery allows. Otherwise, I could get uptimes of several years... I just couldn't believe it if anyone would tell me.
 
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Pepinno said:
Stable as heck. No X Window GUI, of course.

Edit to add: and it only reboots from year to year because the building's power fails for longer than its built-in laptop battery allows. Otherwise, I could get uptimes of several years... I just couldn't believe it if anyone would tell me.
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I believe it. I achieved uptimes on mine well over a year, limited only by my utility company's ability to supply power. If it didn't struggle under the weight of a MySQL-backed webserver, I might still run it. But the hardware is getting questionable. It was the best I could get for $200 back in 2002. Oddly enough, I predicted when I put it into service that by the time it died, I'd be able to get a 2 GHz machine for $200. I was off. This summer, I turned down at least one opportunity to buy a 2 GHz machine for $20.
 
Dave Farquhar said:
One gotcha with Ubuntu server. If you want a static IP, set it up with a static IP from the get-go. I built mine with DHCP, then changed to a static IP once it was ready to go, and now it reverts to DHCP every so often. Not good. It's a known issue, but unfortunately I haven't found an authoritative fix for it.
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That's bizarre. I'm not a professional, but I've put Ubuntu server on a number of machines just to play with. I've also got a server which has been up for a year or so, plus an always-on desktop with fluxbox for regular use and those never showed any such problems. I just type "iface eth0 inet static" or "iface eth0 inet DHCP" into /etc/network/interfaces" and it stays there. I can't imagine what could automatically write to that file. Are you using some kind of configuration program or GUI thingie? I'm still amazed... going to google that right now.

Ah, rather than rewrite the above, I'll just post what I found:
This happens because you change your interfaces file first and then run ifdown. At that point, ifdown doesn't know that it has a dhclient running and hence doesn't stop it.
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Operator error. :) Ubuntu server is widely employed for professional use and it would not be usable if indeed it switched to DHCP on it's own. I still suppose that if you run some GUI network manager program that all bets are off for reliability.
 
Good to know. That sounds like exactly what I did; change /etc/interfaces and then ifdown followed by ifup. Strangely, the problem surfaced after I had a power outage. Maybe it's just coincidence.

It's been OK now since Sunday, so hopefully the problem is solved. If it happens again I'll do an ifdown, edit /etc/interfaces, then do an ifup.

Thanks!
 
Dave Farquhar said:
Good to know. That sounds like exactly what I did; change /etc/interfaces and then ifdown followed by ifup. Strangely, the problem surfaced after I had a power outage. Maybe it's just coincidence.

It's been OK now since Sunday, so hopefully the problem is solved. If it happens again I'll do an ifdown, edit /etc/interfaces, then do an ifup.

Thanks!
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I haven't used Ubuntu server in a while, but I know that some recent Ubuntu desktop versions run NetworkManager by default, which will overwrite a lot of config files when trying to manage connections automatically. If you want a static IP you have to make sure it is not running.
 
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