• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Elks

I

im_an_alien

Experienced Member
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
121
Location
Waleska, GA
ELKS (Embeddable Linux Kernel System) is a form of linux, with a modified kernel IIRC, that is designed to run on 8088's and 8086's. I've got a picture of it running on my XT. I haven't gotten much chance to play around with it, though. I think it said somewhere on the site that 512KB of RAM was reccomended.
 
How painful was it?

I've looked at ELKS before for my PCjr, but I would have to patch it to not use the first 128K of memory. (That is where the Jr has the memory hole.)

ELKS is loosely based on Linux. There is no memory management of any type on it, as the 8088 class machines don't have MMUs in hardware.
 
I looked into ELKS several years ago, and it looked like the project was stalled back then. I think I'd be more tempted to try an older version of MINIX or perhaps even Xenix on my 808X systems.

Just my $0.02 though.
 
Yeah, I'm going to look at MINIX and Xenix and try those, too. Right now I hardly know what the real difference is though...
 
I've been interested in running ELKS on something here, but does it require a harddrive? Or can it run in ram? I'll have to read more about it.

About running Xenix, it's an interesting twist on Unix. I have an Altos box running it, and there seems to be no security to it, as you can log on as any of the listed users (you can see the list as root). Also, each user has a different ascii based desktop set up for them. I should take pictures of it running with the different users logged on.

Nathan
 
NathanAllan said:
I've been interested in running ELKS on something here, but does it require a harddrive? Or can it run in ram?
Click to expand...

No HDD required. There's a boot floppy and a root floppy, which acts like a HDD would, containing all the main directories, etc. I suppose from there you can mount a floppy in the B: drive (or possibly the HDD) if you want to save anything. I haven't tried any of this yet, though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top