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BSDs and my AMDK6-2 400 rig with 256megs of ram.

Caluser2000

Caluser2000

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Recently I decided try out the current BSD range of operating systems. For decades I've seen mentioned, over the years, of their awesome compatibility with with old kit. After a few days or installing them, testing them and comparing them with old Linux distros the outcome wasn't that great.

MidnightBSD and FreeBSD didn't even make it to the installation phase. OpenBSD and NetBSD installed but xwindows had bad artifacts when moving the mouse and opening/closing windows. This was similar to having corrupt video card memory. I was very impressed with NetBSDs installation routine. I tried a couple of different copies of optical media just in case it was the issue.

On the other hand every old linux I tried xwindows was set set up perfectly- Corel linux 1999, Turbo Linux 6.0 WorkStaion 1990, Red Hat 7.3 2002, Xandro 2 2003Ubuntu 4.10 Warty Warthog, Lbuntu 10.10, Debian Jessie, Devuan Jessie, Slackware 13.0 and Slackware 14.2.

Thought I'd post this and find out what luck other members have had with the BSD range of OSs.

Devuan Jessie is my go to OS on this particular system ;)
 
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Well, I've run OpenBSD on a K6 (K6-3, 450Mhz, 768MB memory) system, but only as a server, so no GUI installed. It ran solidly for months between reboots. I wonder if your GUI issue is more related to the video card drivers. I've also used older NetBSD distros for old hardware support with no issues. Never played with FreeBSD, PCBSD or any of the others.
 
Cheers Chuck. That was what I was thinking. The Millenniun 2 video card may well be the issue. I will try them out on a Pentiun 3 800 system I have out in the garage. Down in the guts of them it really isn't terribly different having a gander around in mc. Package management isn't difficult either.

Strange though that more recent Linux distros handle the video card just fun and pick up the maximum resolution.

It's been quite fun testing though. Red Hat7.3 was the distro I had on my first dedicated Linux box, A slimline HP with p200mmx cpu. fond memory I dug out of a trash bin and a great learning experience. ;)
 
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I used to make a point of keeping up with NetBSD on a Sun Ultra 10 because of a sort of love/hate relationship I cultivated with the OS when I was working at a startup that used it as the basis of their product. (Which resulted in us having to use it on all the internal IT server infrastructure as well because somehow the engineers managed to prevail with the opinion that it was necessary to "dogfood" the OS as widely as possible. Obviously there are problems with that logic.) But it's been long time.

(Obviously I had to use the Sun machine instead of a normal PC because I needed something that complied with their old "Of course it runs NetBSD!" slogon while not being too painfully, tooth-hurting-ly slow...)

I guess to give you an idea how long it's been the most recent thing I (vaguely) remember about the status of the NetBSD desktop was that there were some persistent pains happening trying to migrate the various ports from an "internalized" fork of the old Xfree86-based X11 server infrastructure to a modular system based on Xorg. I would blithely assume that they must have sorted that out in the x86 port by now, but I do kind of wonder if in the process they may have ended up deprecating native support for quite a few old video cards and what you're seeing is issues with a generic framebuffer driver. (Possibly complicated by underlying differences between kernel-level framebuffer support between *BSD and Linux.) Maybe you'd have better luck with a different card, although unless it's something verging on not-period-appropriate for the rest of the machine I wouldn't be super-optimistic.

As for FreeBSD/Midnight not even getting through the installer, I was wondering if at some point the minimum bar for those versions was raised to "Pentium Pro or better", which is where it is for most mainline Linux distributions these days, but the FreeBSD hardware requirements still claim it should work on anything 486 or better. IE, they say:

Code: 
All 32-bit x86 compatible processors with a floating point unit and support for the CMPXCHG instruction
(introduced in the 80486) are supported. This includes the Pentium® families of processors from Intel as well as
x86-compatible processors from AMD, Cyrix, NexGen, and VIA.

When you say they weren't even getting to the installer how do you mean? Did they not even boot? I ask because the last time I tried installing Linux or BSD on a P5-class machine (A Pentium 200 with a late 1997 BIOS) one of the things I ran into that caused the most problems was simply that a lot of then-modern installation ISOs were incompatible with the CD-ROM boot support in the old BIOS. NetBSD's ISO was one of the few that would actually boot on it; to get Debian on the machine (which was ultimately what I wanted) I ended up putting a PXE ROM-equipped network card into it and kicking off a network install. (It's surprisingly easy to set up to do that.)
 
Caluser2000 said:
On the other hand every old linux I tried xwindows was set set up perfectly- Corel linux 1999, Turbo Linux 6.0 WorkStaion 1990, Red Hat 7.3 2002, Xandro 2 2003Ubuntu 4.10 Warty Warthog, Lbuntu 10.10, Debian Jessie, Devuan Jessie, Slackware 13.0 and Slackware 14.2.
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FWIW, you would probably also have better luck running 15+ year old versions of Free/Net/OpenBSD, so it's probably not really an apples-to-apples comparison. You have to look pretty hard these days to find a pre-baked Linux distribution that will run on any pre-P6-family CPU. (IE, CPUs without the CMOV instruction. This includes some CPUs made well into the early 2000s, like the Via C3.)
 
Hey that is impressive. I plugged my old Crunch Bang Linux install hdd the AMDK6-2 400 rig, turned the system on and wammo it works no sweat. I just had to put a mickysoft usb keyboard in as the AT kb didn't come up. Haven't used this for at least half a decade. The install moaned about needing a mov pea cpu when I first installed it. Ended up putting it in an Acer F1 Celery 2.5MHz ,with 2gigs of ram, system and used that as the family computer for some time. Hello old friend :) What installed version of MS Windows would transition from one completely differ system in respect to hardware like thiis?

The /etc/apt/sources.list file points to the Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 repo archives.
I originally installed it in 2011.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
FWIW, you would probably also have better luck running 15+ year old versions of Free/Net/OpenBSD, so it's probably not really an apples-to-apples comparison. You have to look pretty hard these days to find a pre-baked Linux distribution that will run on any pre-P6-family CPU. (IE, CPUs without the CMOV instruction. This includes some CPUs made well into the early 2000s, like the Via C3.)
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Read the WHOLE post instead of quoting a wee snippit next time. You don't seem to understand what I am actually trying to get acros to fellow members. i'm with Chuck on the video card angel as the seems to be the major problem with xwindows in OpenBSD and NetBSD.

More modern versions of linux installed on the AMDK6_2 400 just fine,(Debian/Devuan jessie, Slackware 14.2 as mentioned in my first post) and dandy thank you very much. Resent BSDs MidnightBSD and the BSD it is based in FreeBDB didn't even make it to the installation routine. Now why is that? The BSDs rave about being installed on things as 386/486s ffs.

I even fitted my old Crunch Bang hdd I orinially installed back in 2011 and this booted up to the XFCE4 desktop perfectly with a network card, video, cpu, mobo etc. on the AMDK6-2 400 rig. Only issue was the keyboard. I plugged in a usb keyboard the the pci 4 port usb card the system has in it and was good to go.
 
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Caluser2000 said:
More modern versions of linux installed on the AMDK6_2 400 just fine,(Debian/Devuan jessie, Slackware 14.2 as mentioned in my first post)
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Jessie is six years old, and it was the last version of Debian to support pre-i686 CPUs out of the box. Likewise Slackware 14.2 dates to 2016 and Slackware specifically is, or at least was, compiled with i486 as the target. (It's been a while, I think they may have crept forward to some flavor of "586"?) These very much do not count as "modern" Linux distributions. You still technically can run Linux on a 486 or better but you almost have to go with one of the "compile it yourself" flavors.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Jessie is six years old, and it was the last version of Debian to support pre-i686 CPUs out of the box. Likewise Slackware 14.2 dates to 2016 and Slackware specifically is, or at least was, compiled with i486 as the target. (It's been a while, I think they may have crept forward to some flavor of "586"?) These very much do not count as "modern" Linux distributions. You still technically can run Linux on a 486 or better but you almost have to go with one of the "compile it yourself" flavors.
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Again:

Read the WHOLE post instead of quoting a wee snippit next time. You don't seem to understand what I am actually trying to get acros to fellow members. i'm with Chuck on the video card angel as the seems to be the major problem with xwindows in OpenBSD and NetBSD.

More modern versions of linux installed on the AMDK6_2 400 just fine,(Debian/Devuan jessie, Slackware 14.2 as mentioned in my first post) and dandy thank you very much. Resent BSDs MidnightBSD and the BSD it is based in FreeBDB didn't even make it to the installation routine. Now why is that? The BSDs rave about being installed on things as 386/486s ffs.

I even fitted my old Crunch Bang hdd I orinially installed back in 2011 and this booted up to the XFCE4 desktop perfectly with a network card, video, cpu, mobo etc. on the AMDK6-2 400 rig. Only issue was the keyboard. I plugged in a usb keyboard the the pci 4 port usb card the system has in it and was good to go.
 
Jessie was end of lifed a few years ago. Slackware 14.2 is still supported...In fact I updated it last week except for the !686 kernals. Slackware gives you a nice menu so you can choose what and what not to update. I really don't know why the adults are afraid to use Slackware.

Know what you are posting about before making said posts please.
 
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Caluser2000 said:
Jessie was end of lifed a few years ago. Slackware 14.2 is still supported...In fact I updated it last week except for the !686 kernals. Slackware gives you a nice menu so you can choose what and what not to update. I really don't know why the adults are afraid to use Slackware.

Know what you are posting about before making said posts please.
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I'm baffled as to what you think I'm getting wrong by pointing out that you're comparing an EOL'ed linux (that like I said, is specifically documented as the last mainline major version of Debian that supported the K6 CPU) and one that's specifically compiled to run on old machines to what I assume are BSD installers you just downloaded? (IE, 2021/2022 distributions of the various BSDs.) If I'm wrong on that assumption about the BSDs then please correct me, what versions are you trying?

My point is that there may have been changes in the upstream versions of some components (like Xorg) that NetBSD/OpenBSD are using that are beyond the control of the maintainers of these OSes. Maybe something happened that broke support for old Matrox cards in 2019 that's not going to show up on a Linux distribution that froze the major versions of Xorg it uses in 2016. (Which is usually how Linux treats components like this.) Or, frankly, it could just be a very specific issue with your combination of hardware. The sad fact is that almost nobody uses Net/OpenBSD as desktop environments, they're mostly aimed at embedded and server applications. If you really care you could just try filing a bug or hitting the mailing lists, you very well could be the only person that's exercised this code in a while.

Again, without more detail on exactly *where* and *how* the installers for the other FreeBSDs died I can't hazard a guess. I related how I've had issues with bootable CDs on old BIOSes, from what little you've said I don't even know if you're getting that far.
 
On the other hand, Linux has long-since dropped the VIA IDE controller that you could find on C3/C9/C10 equipped CPUs, but BSD still supports it (the last I tried).

I suspect that little of this will make any difference as the various flavors of *nix drop 32-bit CPU support. The exception may be the 32-bit ARM CPU support.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
I'm baffled as to what you think I'm getting wrong by pointing out that you're comparing an EOL'ed linux (that like I said, is specifically documented as the last mainline major version of Debian that supported the K6 CPU) and one that's specifically compiled to run on old machines to what I assume are BSD installers you just downloaded? (IE, 2021/2022 distributions of the various BSDs.) If I'm wrong on that assumption about the BSDs then please correct me, what versions are you trying?

My point is that there may have been changes in the upstream versions of some components (like Xorg) that NetBSD/OpenBSD are using that are beyond the control of the maintainers of these OSes. Maybe something happened that broke support for old Matrox cards in 2019 that's not going to show up on a Linux distribution that froze the major versions of Xorg it uses in 2016. (Which is usually how Linux treats components like this.) Or, frankly, it could just be a very specific issue with your combination of hardware. The sad fact is that almost nobody uses Net/OpenBSD as desktop environments, they're mostly aimed at embedded and server applications. If you really care you could just try filing a bug or hitting the mailing lists, you very well could be the only person that's exercised this code in a while.

Again, without more detail on exactly *where* and *how* the installers for the other FreeBSDs died I can't hazard a guess. I related how I've had issues with bootable CDs on old BIOSes, from what little you've said I don't even know if you're getting that far.
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This is ONE particular system in ONE particular reconfiguration I am referring too. I don't understand why you are confused.


It seems like you are over analogizing my first post.


I could make it simpler in just one sentence if you like?
 
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Chuck(G) said:
On the other hand, Linux has long-since dropped the VIA IDE controller that you could find on C3/C9/C10 equipped CPUs, but BSD still supports it (the last I tried).
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I remember some years ago the NetBSD steering committee actively begin taking measures to back away from this idea that "Of course it runs NetBSD!" translated to "NetBSD will always run on whatever old stuff you have lying around forever, no matter what, and that's all it's good for". (This was when they introduced the "Tier" concept for ports that resulted in all but eight architectures getting punted off the main page and several really niche ports ending up in the attic over the subsequent years.) The core value they want to push is that NetBSD is designed from the ground-up to be lightweight, machine-independent and easily ported, thereby making it a logical choice to use for new and exciting, or at least relevant, things. Not that it will always run perfectly on and support every possible combination of hardware in whatever obsolete computer you happen to have, at least not without you putting in a little work.

To put it another way, in the grand scheme of things that NetBSD can still "run" on something as limited as a Sun2 workstation is primarily useful as a demonstration of how it's possible to trim the OS down enough to fit in a teeny-tiny box, it's not really a very useful thing in and of itself. (How many people do you know that still have a Sun 2/50 in working condition and no better options to do... just about anything, on?) This means that even within the Tier1 ports if there's some hardware device with a driver that's troublesome because it's rare and has no one willing to support it it's fair game to get deleted, same as it is in Linux. I think the BSDs do it less often in part because their focus on device independence and slower evolution has meant that there is less device-breaking "churn" in the kernel interfaces, but ultimately if nobody is using something support might still go someday even though the OS continues to claim support for machines of that "era".
 
Eudimorphodon said:
I remember some years ago the NetBSD steering committee actively begin taking measures to back away from this idea that "Of course it runs NetBSD!" translated to "NetBSD will always run on whatever old stuff you have lying around forever, no matter what, and that's all it's good for". (This was when they introduced the "Tier" concept for ports that resulted in all but eight architectures getting punted off the main page and several really niche ports ending up in the attic over the subsequent years.) The core value they want to push is that NetBSD is designed from the ground-up to be lightweight, machine-independent and easily ported, thereby making it a logical choice to use for new and exciting, or at least relevant, things. Not that it will always run perfectly on and support every possible combination of hardware in whatever obsolete computer you happen to have, at least not without you putting in a little work.

To put it another way, in the grand scheme of things that NetBSD can still "run" on something as limited as a Sun2 workstation is primarily useful as a demonstration of how it's possible to trim the OS down enough to fit in a teeny-tiny box, it's not really a very useful thing in and of itself. (How many people do you know that still have a Sun 2/50 in working condition and no better options to do... just about anything, on?) This means that even within the Tier1 ports if there's some hardware device with a driver that's troublesome because it's rare and has no one willing to support it it's fair game to get deleted, same as it is in Linux. I think the BSDs do it less often in part because their focus on device independence and slower evolution has meant that there is less device-breaking "churn" in the kernel interfaces, but ultimately if nobody is using something support might still go someday even though the OS continues to claim support for machines of that "era".
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Now that is useful information.

Thank you for posting it. I'm sure other vfed members will find it useful.
 
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