jbrabeck wrote:

I started out by doing Paradox programming for them back in '98. Their network is Novell, don't know the version as they have a network support company.

NetWare version can make a significant difference, as the networking protocol stack has evolved over time. NetWare 3.x used the original NetWare Core Protocol (NCP) layers over IPX/SPX transport for machines running its native client software (which, itself, came in several variants). NetWare 4.x added NetWare Directory Services (a very important change!) above NCP, along with abstracting NCP completely from IPX/SPX, allowing variants such (relatively rare) deployments of NCP over IP. I vaguely recall that NetWare 5.x and 6.x have switched to IP transport by default, but please don't hold me to that.

Probably the biggest differentiator is whether you login to an NDS context or not. Of late, Novell is calling NDS "eDirectory", which nomenclature I'm still not used to, as it keeps coming across as a dot-com joke in questionable taste. NDS/eDirectory is a sort-of finely-honed X.500 directory service that I believe has been moving closer to a specialised sort of LDAPv3 structure, over the years.

Looks like you can download the proprietary evaluation version of the Linux eDirectory client software for x86 Linux distributions here: [link|http://download.novell.com/|http://download.novell.com/] They say that you must [link|http://www.novell.com/products/edirectory/howtobuy.html|buy] a non-evaluation copy for any production use. There's also file access via [link|http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1157502,00.asp|Web browser](!), which is way too damned peculiar for my liking, and strikes me as of dubious utility over the long term.

There is reasonably good open-source NDS client software for Linux -- [link|ftp://platan.vc.cvut.cz/pub/linux/ncpfs|ncpfs] (NCP filesystem)I vaguely recall that it hasn't quite kept step with Novell's post-5.0 improvements (but, then, there are a huge number of non-upgraded 3.x and 4.x networks out there, so that may not be an issue).

The Linux community as a whole pretty much blew off Novell some years ago as too hopelessly stuck in its own shrinking proprietary world -- which is something of a shame, because they have extremely talented networking engineers/designers. I'm as guilty of this as anyone on the Linux side of things, and so was taken by surprise to find Novell becoming, of late, staunch supporters and adopters of Linux as core technology. It hasn't helped that the main provider of proprietary pieces in the past has been Caldera Systems (of lawsuit infamy). This is of course changing, but there's a bit of an information gap -- and an even bigger mindshare gap -- at the moment.

I have a copy of Corel Linux Office 2000, (WP, Quattro and Paradox for Linux).

Please note that you'll have a difficult time finding many copies of that -- and it would not be lawful to install your one copy throughout your organisation. Remaindered copies can be found [link|http://linuxmafia.com/wpfaq/wp9.html#GETWP9|here and there], but they're becoming more rare all the time.

I personally think that porting Win32 applications only far enough to make them run under Winelib was a dreadful idea ab initio, but I'm a native-app bigot, and you should arrive at your own opinions. ;-> With Paradox, that's all that Corel ever offered, so it was their way or the highway.

It states that the minimum hardware requirement is Pentium 166.

I'll bet a 486 would actually be liveable -- but, to get reasonable performance with ported Winelib apps, not to mention popular desktop toys like GNOME/KDE/OpenOffice.org, you'd need a ton of RAM to go with it, which the retired 486es almost certainly do not have. And, of course, anyone buying new RAM for a 486 in 2003 needs his head examined.

Based on the collective recommendation, I'll suggest to the client that he abandon the idea of "unretiring" the old 486s and purchase new hardware (Walmart has their Lindows machine still at $299.00), and I'll be happy to work with him on getting Linux on all the computers.

Suggestion: Borrow one of those 486 boxes. In fact, stuff it full of RAM scavenged from the other 486en in the pile, as much as it will reasonably hold. Take it home, download one or two Linux distributions, and play with them to see what they're capable of. That will put the rest of this discussion in much sharper context.

Linux in most deployments honestly is not at all CPU-intensive -- unless you're doing large amounts of silly rendering or screen-swooping effects, e.g. with KDE. One of the nicest Linux desktop boxes I have is an AMD K6/233 with about 384 kB of RAM, a nice old Number Nine Imagine128 video card, and a pair of fast 10kRPM SCSI hard drives. I usually run it with my favourite window manager, [link|http://www.plig.org/xwinman/wmaker.html|Window Maker]. The system never seems slow. Just never.

But, generally, I concur with other people's comments that it's difficult to beat the price of new commodity x86 boxes (and a retired 486 of unknown hardware configuration may be too damned much trouble). Only, for heaven's sake, do prototyping. For example, many of the extreme low-end boxes such as the Fry's Electronics $299 boxes preloaded with "ThizLinux" out of Hong Kong, come with VIA C3 Ezra "CentaurHauls" Intel-clone CPUs. Stepping 12 of that CPU is fine, but the equally-common stepping 8 produces errors under Linux on some calculation functions on account of hardware-compatibility problems (and of course you have no idea in advance which chip you're getting). The latter problem can be fixed in any Linux distribution through some rather indelicate library hackery, but the dollar savings isn't worth the hassle.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

I run Windowmaker on a Toshiba Tecra 8000 with a P300, and it's fine for xterms etc. - but run a "big app" like Konqueror and it's pokey. (Yes, I know, a lot of KDE components need to start up to run Konqueror). Still, it's usable. It's definitely NOT usable on a P166 - Netscape on Windowmaker is acceptable there.

The standard Tecra 8000 came mostly in one of two configurations: PII/300, 64MB RAM, and 6.4GB hard drive -- or PII/366, 128MB RAM, and a 10GB hard drive. Sounds like yours is the former.

Laptops generally are a special case, and don't compare well directly to desktop machines (which, to be blunt, is what you were doing by implication), because of compromises in the design intended to keep power consumption and heat-generation low. Those entail slow hard drives and a tendency to run the CPU in slow, lazy modes as often as possible. If you combine a slow hard drive with relatively low RAM, then you are spending a lot of time plowing through slow swap, which dramatically worsens the effect that the slow hard drive would have otherwise. That's consistent with what you report about "big" apps. I'll bet that you'd be radically happier if you were able to justify buying a second RAM stick.

So, in particular, what I'm suggesting is that your attributing the pokiness to the PII/300 is simply incorrect. What you're seeing is attributable, instead, to RAM shortage and slow swap.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

I have to keep reminding myself of the type of machine people mean when they say "retired 486": That would typically be a generic 486DX/33, 486SX/33, or 486DX2/66 with ISA bus only, an antique [link|http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#486|1994-or-earlier BIOS] incapable of supporting hard drives bigger than 504MB, 32MB of RAM, a single, slow IDE hard drive, a really cheesy Trident or C&T video chipset with from 256kB to 1MB video RAM, and either no NIC or some really cruddy NE2000 clone. And a 15" monitor.

My main machine for eight years running was a 486. Thus: AMI Enterprise III with three VLB slots, five EISA ones, and 16 SIMM sockets for fast-page RAM. Adaptec 1742A SCSI host adapter. ATI Mach32 VLB video card with 4 MB VRAM. Two 7200 RPM IBM SCSI hard drives. One 4x Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM drive. One Yamaha 4X CDR burner. Two 3Com 3C509B ethernet cards. It used a NEC 4FG with effectively a 16" display until I retired it and got my 17" ViewSonic. 32 MB RAM, eventually doubled (about halfway through its service life).

That machine was beefy enough to be my SMTP + Apache + ftp + ssh/shell server for all of my remote users, plus at the same time do local X11 desktop duty for me (fvwm2 window manager), plus at the same time burning CD-ROMs. (Mind you, this was in the days before Linux word processors hogging 73 MB of RAM just to load.)

It was more than acceptable for all of those simultaneous functions during all eight years of service, because I designed it for high I/O in Unix OSes, throughout the hardware. When I say "in Unix Oses", I mean that it was a balanced design, not skimping in some areas of hardware and splurging irrationally in others where Unixes don't benefit very much, resulting in an overall Unix system with sub-optimal performance for the dollar.

The reason I mention all this is the sucky-Linux-system-for-the-dollar syndrome's still with us, now being driven by a new gang of idiots: gamers.

That pretty much was inevitable, as a matter of market economics: The hardware market collapsed, and the only growth area remaining has been the sort of system marketed to teenagers of all ages who fancy themselves gamer D00DZ. You've probably seen them in PC clone shops, and wondered what the hell they were: Transparent compact Plexiglas cases with handles for carrying, neon tube lighting, garishly bright coloured motherboards, ridiculously overpowered CPUs (often 2.4 GHz Athlons) with oversized heat-sinks and fans, NVidia 3D video cards requiring proprietary X11 server software -- and sucky, pathetically under-engineered I/O in every area other than video.

The kiddies who favour these things are basically MS-Windows gamer types who wander over into Linux mailing lists and start giving dumbass hardware recommendations: I see that happen all the time, posting recommendations of poor-value hardware that's poorly balanced for Linux use -- way, way top-heavy on CPU power (and consequently on power draw and heat dissipation), while pathetically bad at I/O (especially mass storage).

My systems, including my former 486, get spec'd to give excellent performance for the dollar over many years of projected service life -- and also to get good parts longevity, through low heat build-up. The ones the kiddies are recommending are overpriced for their real-world Linux performance today, will tend to die early (because of heat), and won't wear well over the years to come. And they're making the same type of error that people made earlier, just with fancier and newer hardware.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com