DrWho? wrote:
I had several early kernels from the 1.x range that ran on an XT.
I'm curious about this The mainstream linux kernel has always had the requirement of a MMU, which means that it has always required a 386 or better. ELKS and uCLinux run on machines that don't have an MMU however they are severely crippled and didn't appear until much later. The original post announcing linux availability (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1991Oct5.054106.4647%40klaava.Helsinki....) mentions that it requires a 386. The 1.0 changes file (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v1.0/CHANGES) doesn't mention support for any other processors. I believe Linux 1.2 was the first ("stable") version to offer support for non-386 class machines (it supported the DEC Alpha).
I also had an early 2.x kernel that would run on a 286. I was running a full NAT gateway with SMTP, NNTP and various other mail type services on such a system back when Linux was still an "educational development" OS.
The official 2.x kernels still required a 386.