> Technically, the Am386 could run Windows 95, but it wasn’t a great experience.
Technically not. It can run it. Was slow? Yes, but my Am386DX40 keep working fine from 1991 to 1996. Running DR-DOS 6, MS-DOS 6.11, Windows 3.1 and finally Windows 95. And, of course, I could play DooM 2 on it. At some point, I got a math copro.
Finally, my father upgraded the machine with an AMD 486DX5 133MHz.
killerstorm 11 minutes ago [-]
My father got me a second-hand computer with Am386DX-40 somewhere around 1997, IIRC.
It was two generations old at that time but still a lot of fun: it could run a lot of games (incl. DOOM, of course), programming (largely Turbo Pascal 7), and some word processing under Windows 3.11.
I didn't bother with Win95, though.
I've been using it up until 1999, when I finally got a then-modern computer with Windows 98. But in some ways MS-DOS felt more capable - I really knew what each file is for, what computer is doing, etc. I.e. the entire machine is fully comprehensible. You really don't get it with Windows unless you're Russinovich or something.
iberator 2 hours ago [-]
NETBSD still can run on it too :) Best and most portable os in the history
messe 2 hours ago [-]
> most portable os
Eh... I think the Linux kernel + your choice of libc/userland has it beat these days.
actionfromafar 1 hours ago [-]
Modern Linux dropped support for a lot of old and niche CPUs.
messe 15 minutes ago [-]
And NetBSD is missing support for an order of magnitude more SoCs. I like NetBSD. I've run it on several systems in the past, and not just as a toy. I like the whole BSD family, and even deploy FreeBSD in production at work, and use OpenBSD on my home router. But NetBSD's claim as the most portable OS doesn't hold up these days.
anthk 1 hours ago [-]
Modern Linux can't even scratch a 486 and some Motorola platforms. Or VAX. Heck, I run NetBSD 10.1 vanilla under simh 3.8 for 9front emulated on an amd64 laptop (old Celeron, 2GB). Slow, but enough to play Slashem.
On portability on compilers, plan9/9front it's unbeatable. Do you now Go compiling from any OS to any arch? The same here, but just for an OS obviously. Albeit I can still run Golang under i386, and tools like Rclone under 9front i386.
That's really cool.
messe 16 minutes ago [-]
That's a very limited view of what portability means.
Driver support for a niche SoC? Good luck getting NetBSD on before Linux. The sheer amount of SoCs supported by the Linux kernel dwarfs anything NetBSD has to offer.
spijdar 7 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, NetBSD's support for modern hardware isn't amazing compared to Linux. I love it (and run my personal web server on it!), but the portability thing feels like a meme from the 4.4BSD days, where it ran on basically every workstation platform.
Like sure, it runs on my VAX, my Sun4/75, and my Alpha box, but it doesn't run on my POWER9 workstation nor does it run my Amlogic A311D ARM device (at least in a usable capacity), and I couldn't even get i.MX 8M running. I didn't try super hard, to be fair, but why would I burn cycles getting an OS with less peripheral support running when Linux "just works"?
Rendered at 16:16:51 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Technically not. It can run it. Was slow? Yes, but my Am386DX40 keep working fine from 1991 to 1996. Running DR-DOS 6, MS-DOS 6.11, Windows 3.1 and finally Windows 95. And, of course, I could play DooM 2 on it. At some point, I got a math copro. Finally, my father upgraded the machine with an AMD 486DX5 133MHz.
It was two generations old at that time but still a lot of fun: it could run a lot of games (incl. DOOM, of course), programming (largely Turbo Pascal 7), and some word processing under Windows 3.11.
I didn't bother with Win95, though.
I've been using it up until 1999, when I finally got a then-modern computer with Windows 98. But in some ways MS-DOS felt more capable - I really knew what each file is for, what computer is doing, etc. I.e. the entire machine is fully comprehensible. You really don't get it with Windows unless you're Russinovich or something.
Eh... I think the Linux kernel + your choice of libc/userland has it beat these days.
On portability on compilers, plan9/9front it's unbeatable. Do you now Go compiling from any OS to any arch? The same here, but just for an OS obviously. Albeit I can still run Golang under i386, and tools like Rclone under 9front i386. That's really cool.
Driver support for a niche SoC? Good luck getting NetBSD on before Linux. The sheer amount of SoCs supported by the Linux kernel dwarfs anything NetBSD has to offer.
Like sure, it runs on my VAX, my Sun4/75, and my Alpha box, but it doesn't run on my POWER9 workstation nor does it run my Amlogic A311D ARM device (at least in a usable capacity), and I couldn't even get i.MX 8M running. I didn't try super hard, to be fair, but why would I burn cycles getting an OS with less peripheral support running when Linux "just works"?