Re: Memory Rusting Effect [re: Linux hostile to poverty]

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
20 Jul 1998 05:50:31 GMT


In article <Pine.LNX.4.00.9807192137050.555-100000@tahallah.demon.co.uk>,
Alex Buell <alex.buell@tahallah.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>But as far as I know, Linux was written to work well on a 4MB 386 machine.

No.

Linux was written to work well on MY machine. At one point that machine
happened to be a 386 with 4MB of RAM. That time is _long_ gone.

>From what I can tell, Linux-2.1.109 runs fine on a 8MB machine. I even
have a report from some guy who ran it on a 5MB machine and seemed
happy, although he did change some of the default parameters (at
run-time). And I've already made the default be what he reported worked
best.

People seem to think that I don't care. They are wrong. I _do_ care.
But I just don't think it's a showstopper if 2.0.x is faster on a
low-end machine than 2.2.x will be. I won't even worry about it, in
fact. I will just make sure that 2.2 is "reasonable" on 8MB, but
"reasonable" has nothing to do with comparing to 2.0.x.

Linus

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