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Wow, that's really vintage and in great condition as well
The lowest amount of RAM that I ever used for compiling a kernel was 16 MB. I could compile 2.0x and 2.2x kernels with 16 MB, but 2.2x kernels took considerably longer to compile than 2.0x kernels
I’m pretty sure I did it with less back when slackware came on floppies but at this point I don’t remember what ai was running in 1993.
Certainly, one could compile early kernel versions with less than 16 MB, but if I remember well, one needed more than 4 MB RAM to compile 2.2x kernels
In any case, I felt like I had a huge amount of RAM with 16 MB
I remember when 64K felt huge LOL
Two things stand out in my mind of the early-90s Linux era:
Compiling your own kernel was either mandatory or very common. I did a lot of "make mrproper" and "make config" and then later the glorious "make menuconfig" came along. I learned a ton by learning about different options that were available and looking up technologies I'd never heard of before.
Because the unviersity computer center was about a 2-mile walking round trip from my student housing, I quickly learned to make two copies of each floppy.
Dr. Who was running AI in 1993.
Indeed
Back then, the main practical reason for compiling one's own kernel was to save RAM (at a time when RAM was very expensive) and (as a result) to make the kernel run more quickly
Nowadays, this practical reason for compiling one's own kernel is simply no longer compelling, not to mention that compiling one's own kernel has become an expert skill (because of the complexity)
NetBSD and OpenBSD are systems where compiling one's own kernel is still practically feasible
LOL...well, at least my typos are funny.
And there was some AI in 1993...
I honestly can't remember the last time I compiled one. Probably during some Gentoo flirtation.
OpenBSD gives you a new kernel every time you boot
(I realize that's just relinking for randomization, not a recompile).
In many cases, embedded kernels must be recompiled when replacing the original due to the need to add drivers or variants of drivers for various quirky peripherals. Dealing with embedded systems is an art and detective work, heck, sometimes X86 standard systems fail mysteriously, embedded ones need a miracle to work at the first try.
Arguably, you can force a recompile without changing anything and still getting a different blob, but that wouldn't be a different kernel, let alone new :P
I got my first Slack on CD! It was still just a number of directories with the floppy contents and I had to take it to work to extract on floppies, but, hey, the new era was there :P
Now I have the urge to fire up a VM and install slackware from floppies.
https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware-1.1.2/
http://slackware.absolutehosting.net/pub/slackware/slackware-1.1.2/FILE_LIST
I'm shocked at how many of these floppies I remember. N1 was the networking you NEEDED, N2 was mail, N3 was USENET...
You would need to throttle it at .01 of 1 core for an authentic experience
I remember when I got my first 486 DX/66, still a PS/2 but desktop and a VGA BW monitor. I was able to see one star trek TNG episode on it, "Cause and Effect", the only one I had. I worked for an entire day to make it smooth, i.e. when too much movement it was lagging and then went faster. It never really went away, but I managed to make it hard to see.
30+ floppies?
Ain't nobody got time for that!
I think they were 14, iirc, in my case.
For v1.1.2 (cited above), I count 30+ if one wants the full package:
https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware-1.1.2/
I don't remember what version it was, at that time you were not planning on upgrading any time soon in order to patch vulnerabilities, however was on a CHIP magazine CD. I think I might still have it (the CD, not the magazine). It was the time when many people were still wondering how come an OS like that was still free and some were saying it is a kind of a shareware and will charge later.
For me it was something that worked better than windows 3.1 (not 3.11) the portable PC came with and I have managed to make it even faster after a lot of tweaks. It was at a completely different level even compared with windows 95 I saw on other people's "performant" computers.
damnn diving in this rabbithole wish me luck