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From: webb@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com (Bill Webb)
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach
Subject: Re: Mach/386 availability
Message-ID: <1991Mar22.143328@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com>
Date: 22 Mar 91 22:33:28 GMT
References: <1991Mar20.142934.19689@linus.mitre.org>
Sender: news@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com (news id)
Reply-To: webb@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com (Bill Webb)
Organization: IBM AWD Paloalto
Lines: 27

In article <1991Mar20.142934.19689@linus.mitre.org>, barras@sdimax2.mitre.org (Barrus) writes:
|> ...
|> (P.S. - how much memory/diskspace will I need?  I currently only have 2 megs,
|> and only 25 megs of my 80 meg drive are free...)

Well, you could conceivably run Mach with what you have, but I wouldn't
want to. I was able to boot up on a 2mb system, but it was very painful
(login took about 2 minutes and fsck started paging while checking the
disks!). It took a minute just to compile a hello world program. If you
cut out the stuff you didn't need you could just cram the standard
/bin, /etc, /lib, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, and /usr/ucb into 25mb. I think
that CMU states that you need 5mb in order to run Mach - this is
probably true if you want to run X and some of the normal tools such as
xrn and xmh. On the other hand if you are willing to just use the
console and not use X you could probably get by with 3 or 4 mb. I found
that with 3 mb the response was more reasonable, and with 4 mb it was
"normal" (I normally have 6mb on this machine).

So, I'd say you should have 4mb of memory and probably 40mb of disk 
space in order to run Mach reasonably, and more if you want a modern
environment. (: I find a 486 based system with 16mb and 300mb is 
comfortable :)

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The above views are my own, not necessarily those of my employer.
Bill Webb (IBM AWD Palo Alto, Ca.), (415) 855-4457.
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