Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS for *very* old server hardware

[andrew clarke]

On Sun 2014-06-08 09:14:05 UTC+0200, Niki Kovacs (info at microlinux.fr) wrote:

> I'm currently on a Linux training mission for a company in South France, 
> and just for the fun of it, I resurrected a very old server from the 
> server cabinet and put Slackware Linux 14.1 32-bit on it. The server is 
> a Dell Poweredge 1300, roughly 15 (!) years old, equipped with a 
> Pentium-III 500 MHz processor, 110 MB RAM and 3 x 9 SCSI disks (which I 
> configured with a software RAID 5). Slackware runs very nice on this old 
> dinosaur, we managed to get DHCPD, Bind, NTP, Squid+SquidGuard, Apache 
> and some other things to run on it.
> 
> As far as I know (and please correct me if I'm wrong), newer versions of 
> Ubuntu don't boot on these very old processors. Now here's my question : 
> are there eventually some alternate installation CDs of Ubuntu Server 
> (I'm interested in the 12.04 LTS version) that would boot on this old 
> machine?

>From what I understand, for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, all Pentium CPUs are supported:

https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/installation-guide/i386/hardware-supported.html

But for 12.04 LTS, support for CPUs without the CMOV instruction has been removed:

https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/installation-guide/i386/hardware-supported.html

However, CMOV was introduced with the Pentium Pro (P6 series) CPU in
1995, so it's quite likely your Pentium III (also P6 series) will boot
12.04 LTS with no problem.

I suspect it will also boot 14.04 LTS.

> Cheers from the sunny South of France,

Greetings from Melbourne, Australia.

Regards
Andrew