> 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.
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.
> 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.
NETBSD still can run on it too :) Best and most portable os in the history
> most portable os
Eh... I think the Linux kernel + your choice of libc/userland has it beat these days.
Modern Linux dropped support for a lot of old and niche CPUs.
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.