On Feb 9, 7:48 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Linux Monday: Pushing the envelope on old gear
> Damn Small Linux takes that even lower--a 486 processor and 8 MB
> | of RAM.
A friend of mine, Fan Ying Jen, had a pair of 486/33 machines with 16
meg of RAM that he continued to run for almost 14 years. He didn't
use Linux, he used FreeBSD, because it didn't have the extra code to
handle multiple processors (which he didn't need).
The key feature was that they didn't need a heat sink so when he
needed remote access to his bigger servers, he didn't have to worry if
the air conditioning failed.
It also made a nice "simple content" web server and reverse proxy.
The notion isn't limited to arcane machines either. There are
thousands of different Linux "appliance" devices that run in small
(usually ARM - no cooling needed) processors, with relatively small
amounts of memory to be used for things like eithernet switching,
terminal servers (the size of an RJ45 jack), and very low power
applications.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT4936596231.html
There's even "Linux on a chip".
http://www.linuxdevices.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_embedded_Linux_devices
These days Linux scales from somithing not much bigger than a ladybug
to clusters and Z-Series mainframes.
If you've wanted to try playing with virtualization, these itty bitty
Linux distributions are a nice way to get "core" functions without
eating up all of your memory and hard drive. I've started to see a
few applications "ready to run" that are just virtualized appliances
running Linux under the covers.
Here are a few virtualized appliances.
http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/
Anyone else got some good ones?
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