From owner-freebsd-stable Sun Sep 3 13:33: 8 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from campbell.cwx.net (Campbell.cwx.net [216.17.176.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A110137B43C for ; Sun, 3 Sep 2000 13:33:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from verinet.com (pragma. [192.168.1.2]) by campbell.cwx.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA45803; Sun, 3 Sep 2000 14:33:02 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from allenc@verinet.com) Message-ID: <39B2B57E.43DC656F@verinet.com> Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 14:33:02 -0600 From: Allen Campbell X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.13 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: chad@DCFinc.com Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: bad 16550A maybe? References: <200009030108.SAA08680@freeway.dcfinc.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Chad R. Larson" wrote: > > As I recall, Allen Campbell wrote: > > I would kill for a kernel option that makes patching unnecessary but > > the attitude, as expressed above, that anything faster than a 386SX25 > > can not possibly be too slow seems to preclude this. I believe there > > is a shortage of under powered hardware among the developers. Maybe > > that is a good thing. :) > > I don't think so. One of the sources for hardware to run FreeBSD on > in the corporate world is the machines that are too slow to run the > current M$ offerings. We've got a bunch of 486 machines doing > perfectly good work as nameservers, time servers, mail forwarders, > etc. It's a =good= thing that FreeBSD uses a small hardware > footprint. > > Worst case I've encountered (and it was more for the sport than > utility) was a Compaq 386/20 laptop with an 80meg hard drive and > 8meg of RAM. I loaded 2.1.7 on it over a laplink cable connecting > the parallel port to a running bigger system. Worked fine. > > I'm not saying FreeBSD shouldn't run on bigger iron, just that it's > good it doesn't need to. It is evidence of good design that the system will scale down to low end hardware and function acceptably. My 486 is responsible for ipfw, natd, ppp, smtp, pop, nfs, samba, ntp, dns, lpd, ssh and probably a few others I'm not remembering right now. My point was that I'd hate to see anyone with the talent to do kernel development suffer with such hardware. Although it is 4.0-STABLE, I don't build world on this box. It would take more days than I could afford. -- Allen Campbell | Lurking at the bottom of the allenc@verinet.com | gravity well, getting old. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message