Linux on an A1200 - worth a go, or a waste of time?

[mingle]

Hi,

I've seen mention of 68k Linux being able to be run on an A1200...

Obviously it won't be a proper Ubuntu-like desktop, since I think the distro is around 9 years old now!

But, is it a relatively easy thing to do and what would I have at the end of it - a working X-Windows environment, Shell only, etc?

Has anyone else done it and is it worth a tinker?

Cheers,

Mike.

[Amithony]

If you can get it working, I'd give it a go. Worse case scenario, you can reinstall Amiga OS. And you can join the Amiga folding team.

[Piru]

Assuming you have 68k with MMU and enough memory you're set (well true there is uClinux which works without MMU but I doubt it'd be very useful here).

It will be very slow, but you should be able to run X. Do note that most distros have dropped the official 68k support, so you might need to either use very old distribution or do fair bit of hacking yourself.

Is it worth it? IMO no. You'll be much happier with a x86 box running it. Even older x86 machine will be ok.

[alexh]

You'll need more than 2Mbytes of RAM and of course you'll need an accelerator

[persia]

Yeah, really a waste of a good A1200.  Get a discarded x86 machine and put Puppy Linux on it.  You'll be much happier having the A1200 running AmigaDOs...

[mingle]

@alexh

Regarding the accelerator - I'm working on it! :-)

@persia,

Don't worry, I'm not planning on using an A1200 as a dedicated Linux box! Just really seeing what it's like and how well (or otherwise) it runs.

Cheers,

Mike.

[recidivist]

If it's just the challenge of the thing,go for it!

 But personally,I find multiple OSes on a computer are almost more trouble than they're worth;old computers can be gotten so cheaply it's no big deal to have dedicated machines.
Plus the latest linux wants a x86 family dual core !
x86 at 500mhz running Knoppix,slax,ubuntu, Mandriva,Fedora,or SuSE are so much more useful!
Best use the Amiga as an Amiga  :-)