Re: Linux and Older Computers

[Ben Russo <ben umialumni com>]

On Sun, 2002-12-15 at 12:39, RedHat wrote:
> I have some older computers the oldest being a 386 and I have a copy of
> Linux 6.0. I would like to get some use out of these computers so I was
> thinking I could install 6.0 on one and make it my firewall. Would this be a
> good idea or should I stick with 8.0? Maybe set the others up as email and
> bind servers?

As long as you don't expect them to be speed burners you can run 
RedHat 8.0 on them.  I wouldn't expect them to be the fastest boxes in
the world, but for a cable or DSL line with a handfull of protected
boxes, this should be fine.

For e-mail servers they may be a little slow compared to what people are
used to today.

The big thing is RAM, if you plan on running bind, and iptables masq,
you need at *LEAST* 16MB of RAM, if you want to run a Mail server with a
"useable" amount of speed I would recommend that you try to get 64MB of
ram so that the box can cache the mailspools in RAM, otherwise your box
is going to be thrashing swap.