A bit of a trivia question: What is the oldest hardware capable of running a modern Linux-based operating system, including user-space? (Not necessarily GNU userspace, but running a standard GNU/Linux distro would be most interesting.)
By this I mean being capable of running a fairly recent Linux kernel, in some form. I've found out that the Amiga 1200, launched in 1992 can run Debian (video), but are there any older computers capable of this ?
If you're looking to run a modern-ish version of Linux, the oldest hardware is likely a Intel 80386 from 1986, probably with some memory upgrades -- 640k isn't enough for everybody. Note that support for the 386 was dropped with the 3.8 kernel, so you'll need 3.7 or older. 3.7 is new enough to run most current software, particularly the sort that you'd want to run on such a slow machine.
-m32 defaults, which use instructions like cmov that only run on Pentium Pro and later. (Most code 32-bit doesn't use SSE/SSE2 without checking, though.) Even instructions like lock cmpxchg were new in P5 Pentium (or a different undocumented opcode in 486). So you'll very likely have to build your own user-space.
Commented
Jun 2, 2019 at 9:02
The Intel 80486DX came out in 1989, and that can run Gentoo Linux. This is really nice because most Gentoo portage packages are very current. You can build a completely current Linux kernel for it too.
What makes this possible on Gentoo is that the installer software is compiled for the old 80486DX, and then during install you can recompile the portage software packages for your target architecture (i486, i586, and i686 for 32 bit machines). You do have to edit some of the config files, as they are set for i686 by default.
The reasonable way to do this is to install Gentoo using a fast machine onto an older hard drive, and then move the hard drive onto the old machine once done. There are some cheap USB-to-IDE adapters you can get for around $20 to do this. Recompiling on an old computer is painfully slow, even with large amounts of memory.
The software patches needed at present are listed in this posting:
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/4364/6484
Another subtle problem is that the BIOS on such old computers often have bugs, so using the GRUB or Legacy GRUB bootloaders don't work. I have the most success installing the ancient LILO bootloader. It isn't pretty, but it works best on such old hardware.
People just marvel at me at work with my Compaq LTE Elite 4/75CX running the latest Linux kernel and current Gentoo userland.
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/PRODPIC-42318.jpg
Love that built-in mouse, eh? Well, it was cutting edge for back then.
I previously used the old Debian 'Squeeze' distribution (2011) because it supported 80486, but it has become too dated. That was the last Debian version to support 80486. Understand, the Linux kernel still supports 80486, but the distributions and their userland utilities have been dropping support for i486 and often i586.
> blockquote syntax. (This answer does have the bare-bones amount required to answer the question, so it's okay, but it would be better with more information.)
A certain freak has successfully run Ubuntu on a 8-bit microcontroller. From startup to the Ubuntu login window, it took him six hours.
In order to do that, he had to write something that emulates a 32-bit CPU.
So it's imaginable that you could port a modern Linux to a 70ies computer.
Would ELKS count as modern Linux? It can be run on even older hardware (original IBM PC).
I have a 1991 Sun Ultra 1 from 1991 which can run the very latest Linux kernel (I do so under the Gentoo distribution). As old computers go, though, it is quite modern, with a 64-bit CPU, and I've equipped it with a full gigabyte of RAM, which was almost unheard of in that era.
Accoridng to this article link Linux variants dropped support for the i386 processors in version 3.8. However, Distro Watch link still has quite a few distros that support the i386 architecture. Some of them include:
And many others, I'm sure YMMV. I've not installed Linux on anything older than an original AMD Athlon. I've got an Athlon 2600+ running Bodhi, and it's a tad sluggish. Not like trying to run Windows 7 on it, but, still not overly responsive. I wouldn't want to run it on anything older than the Athlon.
If you want old hardware supported by current distros, Debian's MIPS Port is supposed to run on a 1993 SGI Indy.
If you broaden your choice of OS to any *nix you can go way back to the original IBM PC, running Xenix. No MMU, no protection of any kind, no demand paging. Microsoft at their worst. No Linux as it never ran on 16 bit hardware as far as I know.
But, going back even farther, the DEC VAX is relatively ancient (1977) and Linux has been run on these.
The Sun sun3 architecture hails from 1985, and there are 2.6.x ports to it (which are not that different from "modern" kernels, especially when it comes to features that are useful on old hardware. It could support all the software expected of a modern linux system if only the hardware was fast enough :) ).
You can get much further back if you choose an actual Unix*, like a BSD variant. Possibly all the way back to the first machines that ran Unix, provided you can find one whose C compiler can compile C99 or so, and thence Unix.
*Not denigrating Linux, which is an excellent Unix-alike OS, just sayin' that Unix was designed to build itself on the ancient DECs and such that it started on.
The original Macintosh II (16MHz 68020) supported the MC68851 MMU. We got a big batch of these at Virginia Tech in the fall of 1987. It looks like it still might be possible to run Debian on this hardware, although it would surely be painful.
