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Best Operating System on Pentium Gear

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Raven

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Obviously plain DOS will run very quickly on these machines, but what runs the best as far as more complex OSes go on this sort of hardware?

I'd imagine that for earlier Pentiums, i.e., 60-166Mhz, 95 is faster, and that for 200-300Mhz boxen, 98SE is actually faster due to optimizations and such and the capability to better use the memory that a faster system usually comes with.

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?

What do you all use on your Pentium boxen and why?

I'll start:

I use 98SE on my later Pentium boxes, because it provides a combination of DOS compatibility, modern compatibility (i.e., can run fairly recent software and communicate with modern boxes easily), and speed. I've been questioning this lately, however.

I use DOS on my older Pentium boxes, usually 7.10, and it runs quite well and of course does all the things one is accustomed to from DOS. The nice thing about DOS on a Pentium is that the hardware is overkill, so you never need to worry about slowdowns, and it can run every game ever made for DOS, so you don't have to worry about system specs.
 
Chuck(G) said:
With sufficient memory Win2K runs very well.
Click to expand...

I can't imagine that it would have any advantage over 98SE for speed or compatibility, unless you wanted to use a more recent PCI card than 98SE supports or something.. 98SE crawls on a 200Mhz Pentium when you start multitasking... at all.. and that's with 128MB RAM.
 
Raven said:
I can't imagine that it would have any advantage over 98SE for speed or compatibility, unless you wanted to use a more recent PCI card than 98SE supports or something.. 98SE crawls on a 200Mhz Pentium when you start multitasking... at all.. and that's with 128MB RAM.
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Windows 3.x, WIndows 95, OS/2 Warp 3 would all be my choices unless you can get hold of an old version of Linux such as Mandrake Linux 5.
 
Raven said:
I can't imagine that it would have any advantage over 98SE for speed or compatibility, unless you wanted to use a more recent PCI card than 98SE supports or something.. 98SE crawls on a 200Mhz Pentium when you start multitasking... at all.. and that's with 128MB RAM.
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When using large partitions, Win2K is substantially faster on (NTFS) file accesses. There are many packages that require the NT platform to run also. Networking in general is a lot better. And waaay more stable.

NT 4.0 is also a good choice and substantially faster than 2K.

Remember that L1 cache can make a huge difference on P1 systems.
 
From the sound of the mention of "require the NT platform" it sounds to me as though you're not familiar with KernelEx..
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/

There's a similar layer to provide XP API support to 2K for similar reasons - not part of KernelEx though, and not relevant, just thought I'd mention it since you use 2K.

Is it NTFS that's faster on large drives vs FAT32, or do you mean NTFS on NT3/4 vs NT5? If so, that could explain some of the speed problems I've had on my Presario 3020 - I have an 80GB drive with a drive overlay and large FAT32 partition running 98SE at the moment (I also have 95 and 3x on it, if I boot to DOS I could start any).
 
Tried KernelEx and found it didn't support a lot of packages requiring 2K/XP. In particular, some EDA tools that I use don't run on 98SE even with KernelEx.

I also tried to get Chrome to run under 2K using the CHrome2K package. Never could get it to run without crashing. Perhaps the patch only works on very early versions of Chrome.
 
OpenBSD runs very well on Pentium machines...I built a thin client out of a laptop using a 100 MHz Pentium and 40 MB RAM. I could run remote X applications from my desktop with very little lag. Slackware does too, especially with a 2.4 kernel. Debian is also pretty quick with an older Pentium system and 64+ MB RAM, even with X -- I ran Etch with a custom monolithic 2.6 kernel for years on a Toshiba Libretto as my main portable computer.
 
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).
 
FAT16 would be OK, I'd prefer to not have a separate partition but if I'm gonna have one it would be nice if it were natively readable from other OSes, so FAT16 should be ok. That way I could hop on the 'net in NT3/4 and then play a game under DOS that I downloaded using NT without having to save it to anywhere in particular.

I'm going to take the rest of this NT discussion to a PM since it's getting a bit off-topic for the thread/forum.
 
I don't want to drag this thread too far along, but on marginal hardware, there's fat you can cut from any OS (even my beloved OS/2) to make it run better on a sub-200 MHz Pentium. I really did write the book on doing that with Win95/98 (like most obsolete computer books, it's available on Amazon for a penny plus shipping; search "optimizing windows farquhar" to find it). Similar hacks exist for NT4; cutting the fat from 2K is easier since nLite works with it. Omit the stuff like IE, the MS Mail client, MSN, and that kind of stuff, and you can get the base OS install way down (I think Win95 slims down to about 17 meg) and save some registry space and maybe a little RAM, but just as importantly, you save precious directory entries. The more files that are in a directory in a FAT filesystem, the slower performance gets. Microsoft actually warned against this in the DOS 5 manual, but by the time Win95 came along, they were ignoring their own advice.

One of the first things I always do after a 9x install is to delete all the .txt and other similar junk files from C:\windows, then defrag, to get the number of directory entries down. I don't believe NTFS experiences this directory slowdown.

95/98 have some other things you can tweak of course like the CD-ROM cache. But I do think a slimmed-down Win2K isn't a bad choice. Fantastic stability and hardware support. Some general tricks: preformat the HDD NTFS beforehand, using 4K clusters. Sticking with the earliest service pack that still supports your hardware helps a little too; later SPs tended to bloat up the memory requirements quite a bit. In its early days I ran W2K on machines with 128MB of RAM routinely, and even 64MB was tolerable. Of course I preferred 256MB, but at the turn of the century I think a 128MB stick cost $200 so going too far beyond 128MB was a tough sell.

NT4 benefits from the same tricks as 2K does.

I'm rambling. But I believe W2K and anything earlier can be made to run acceptably on first-gen Pentium systems with some tweaking. The question is really what you're after. You can build the dream machine from 1995-96 and run Win95 or NT4 on it, or you can try for as much modern convenience as possible.
 
Is there a difference between 98SE and 98FE for performance/resource usage, like the SPs for 2k? I haven't used any older SPs of any OS once the SP is released, same deal with 98SE vs FE. I have noticed an odd slowness with machines that should be able to run things fine being slow, and perhaps that's the cause. Next time I have some cash I will look to see if I can find a copy of your book. :D

I also always install all of the updates, perhaps I should stick to only those updates that I desperately need to keep things minimal then..
 
I don't consider all the technical issues but somehow Windows 98SE on my pentium just seems "right" :)
 
98SE supports WDM drivers, which opens up nearly all Win2K & WinXP drivers, although sometimes you have to force things and tweak/edit the .inf files and get your hands dirty. WDM support allows you to use much newer peripherals than the original CPU was designed around. USB support is one of those features, as USB support really came into its own on 98SE. WinME has even better drivers support, but isn't welled loved by many, although I never had any issues besides the removal of the "Restart in MS-DOS" mode, which could be hacked back in.

On my main system in the day, I moved to Win2K very soon after it was released and was happy to leave Win9x behind. At the time I was doing telephone (call center) technical support for an outsourcing firm in Beaverton (Stream Int.) and had more than my share of Win9x during the work day. Win2K really runs best with at least 256MB ram in my experience, while XP needs at least 512MB. I've booted both to a desktop in 64MB though...

OS/2 Warp 4 runs great on P5-6 class systems, although I didn't spend much time with the retail release. I was in the Warp 4 beta and was bummed than IBM didn't feel inclined to give their beta testers release copies. I still have the beta CDs & papers though.

With my distaste of Win9x, I was running RedHat Linux 5-6x just before I went back to Windows as my day-to-day OS (I got sucked into Ultima Online...).
I remember bragging to my MS-fan-boy friends how I could be booted to a Gnome desktop faster than Win98 and be only using ~30-40MB ram on a 128MB system.

Gosh... all the memories :D I still have my K6-2 400 that I ran Win2K on, too. I think I put a fresh copy of Win2K on it, but I think I'm gonna dual boot it with Warp 4, unless I can score a copy of Warp Server for eBusiness 4.5...

__
Trevor
 
I've mentioned what I'm running on a couple of my Pentiums here. They're both in the 100MHz range. I also have some P/166MMX systems that don't get used much, simply because they just got set aside when they were retired and I haven't done as much work making them "retro-useful" as opposed to the "daily use" state they were in.

Beside the OSes I list in the other post, I have productively run a number of Linux distros based on 2.0 and 2.1 kernels on Pentiums. Slackware 3.4, SuSE 5.3, Red Hat 5, etc, etc. For NT I've run both 3.51 and 4.0. Which one is better depends on your specific hardware and use. 4.0 is a big step forward in many ways, but it's also considerably more demanding, especially of graphics hardware and memory. I have run Win95 and Win98 on these as well. For lower end Pentiums, I find the last Win95 OEM-only release to be a somewhat better choice than Win98. Later Pentiums will run Win98 just as well as Win95, usually.

As far as Linux security, even the old distros can be made secure if you're a programmer. Usually it's just replacing insecure library calls with their secure replacement. Aside from that, turn off services you don't use. To be honest, since I don't do anything critical with these machines, I don't worry about security beyond just making sure they're not zombies. If I'm suspicious, I keep a second drive around that I do a dd to every so often that I'll do a restore from.
 
I liked the last OEM Win 95 as well. Also had a system with Win98FE on it with absolutely no major issues at all. Of course SE has better support. Best OS on a Pentium? That really depends on the use you have for it. Why settle just one ? :)
Raven you a appear to be a tinkerer, if you haven't given Linux a shot yet you really should. Who knows may like it. Even if it just gives you an insight into *nix like enviroments. It might be a good learning experiance.
 
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Raven said:
From the sound of the mention of "require the NT platform" it sounds to me as though you're not familiar with KernelEx..
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/

There's a similar layer to provide XP API support to 2K for similar reasons - not part of KernelEx though, and not relevant, just thought I'd mention it since you use 2K.
Click to expand...

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!
 
P1s are the perfect box for serious everyday DOS users and I have 4 P1s set up like that. Two are regular users and one is on 24/7. However, for other than DOS and to make it interesting, here is my take:

- DSL (or similar) for non technical users
- BSD for technical users
- Minix for experimenters

Yes, Minix 3 is coming along nicely. Tanenbaum and his students have been busy. The requirements are:
MINIX 3 runs on Pentium-class hardware or later. Other Pentium-compatible CPUs are also supported. MINIX 3 does not currently support 64-bit x86.

The standard installation needs 28 MB of RAM, but it can be squeezed into 8 MB. Recompiling MINIX 3 currently needs 64 MB of RAM.
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Sounds perfect for old P1s doesn't it?

In case someone is not too familiar with V3, here is a little piece from Wikipedia:

Version 3.1.5 was released 5 November 2009. It contains X11, emacs, vi, cc, gcc, perl, python, ash, bash, zsh, ftp, ssh, telnet, pine, and over 400 other common Unix utility programs. With the addition of X11, this version marks the transition away from a text-only system. Another feature of this version, which will be improved in future releases, is the ability of the system to withstand device driver crashes, and in many cases having them automatically replaced without affecting running processes. In this way, MINIX is self-healing and can be used in applications demanding high reliability.
Click to expand...
 
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