You are the right person to ask as you understand the core of the problem:
Why all modern(ish) kernels require 4MB of ram as a hardcoded value? Is it because of the ram page size or what?
Show HN: GentleOS – A pair of hobby OSes for vintage 32-bit and 16-bit PCs
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Re: Show HN: GentleOS – A pair of hobby OSes for vintage 32-bit and 16-bit PCs
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The code is cleaner that what I was expecting from a C repo. Also, it's quite a feat to fit this into 4 MB on a 386.
> it's quite a feat to fit this into 4 MB on a 386. I had 2 different Librex 386SX laptops, with 4MB of RAM, on long-term loan from work around 1992. One was quite chunky, the 2nd was a slimline thing with an off-centre hinge. I ran OS/2 2.0 on them both. So I could run multiple DOS apps, and a WinOS2 VM containing Windows 3.0, meaning I could run Win16 apps as well. And native OS/2 apps, although I didn't have many.…
Why nearly all modern kernels requires 4MB as hardcoded minimum of memory?
I remember runnning a.out(elf predecessor) based linux on 2mb if ram in the past for example (slackware 3 i think).
This is generic question - not about Linux only