What would it take to revitalize Lowarch?

[K.Mandla]

Lowarch, if you don't know what it is, is a dead distro that was intended for pre-i686 machines. Basically you could run Arch on your old Pentium, or on the K6-series (i686 means Pentium Pro and later ... around 150Mhz or so, as a benchmark). It expired about 15 months ago, but the ISO and repos are still online. There's been no word from the "developer" since then.

I don't have much experience spearheading distros, so I'm just wondering out loud what it would take to jumpstart Lowarch again, against the freshest Arch version.

As I see it, it would take repository space, plus some way of remastering the installation ISO to be 486- and 586-friendly. Any machine can cross-compile (I think 8-[ ), which means once a working installation ISO is out there, it's just a matter of keeping fresh versions of the Arch software on hand (and even that would be trivial, since PKGBUILDs make recompiling amazingly easy ... usually).

I know there aren't many i586 or Pentium users left, but before you dismiss it as a useless effort, remember that there are still new i586-based machines being sold. My OLPC XO (http://www.laptop.org) is one. :D

Am I overlooking any other major stumbling block? The corpse of Lowarch is at http://www.lowarch.org, if you want to perform an autopsy. ...

[jseiser]

i would love to help with whatever, i dont have a compatible pc though. unless a via chipset will work. arch runs on it so i dont know. It should def. be used though, their is a 64 bit version, and its important to support older hardware.

[el mariachi]

This would be great for me, since I want to revitalize an old laptop that doesn't work with arch (it's a Pentium Celeron (Pentium II equivalent)

[K.Mandla]

I might give this a try and see if I can leapfrog from the Lowarch kernel all the way up to current. I'd have to recompile almost everything I installed, but it could be fun. (?!) Maybe I'll drag that ugly K6-2 back home, for a true i586 experience. :roll:

[shae]

From what I can tell this would not be too tough.
You can customize the install disk following the instructions here (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Remastering_the_Install_ISO).

I am not sure about getting the space needed to set up the repository though plus it would take alot of CPU time to recompile all the packages. I would certainly be interested in helping out if you need it(seeing I have been using Arch as of late).

[el mariachi]

I have two computers that don't have any real use (well one of them has (it's a Pentium III, the other is a Pentium Celeron (II) )

If I could install some OS in the laptop (the celeron) I could help. it has Windows 2000 installed but it's way too slow for my taste... I'm searching for a way to install CRUX or Lowarch from a floppy. Then I can help you guys out :D

[bwtranch]

I've got an old Compaq that probably has a i386, had win98. A dell laptop that needs a power supply and a battery, had win2000. I actually liked it. And an emachines with Athlon, had winxp home, when it first came out. (boy that was a dog). I put an early version of Xandros on it once (that was a dog, too!) I've been wanting to resurrect 'em for something, but I am coming into the busy part of year so I don't know how much time I'll have. See how it goes.:)

[el mariachi]

if I can find a replacement cd drive I'll help you in no time.
It's a S1700-200 btw, in case someone has one extra laying around :lolflag: