On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 7:50 PM, Phil Schaffner
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Alan Bartlett wrote on 04/14/2011 06:55 PM:
> ...
>>
>> You've obviously had similar thoughts just like mine . . . but have
>> developed them that bit further.
>>
>> It really depends upon the need for non-PAE 32-bit kernels for EL6.
>
> My non-PAE-capable IBM T42p Pentium-M laptop is dead ATM from a fan failure,
> but the possibility of a compatible SL6 release might prompt me to resurrect
> it.  Part of the reason I have not bothered to hack the hardware is the
> upstream decision to drop support for non-PAE 32-bit systems.
>
> As a matter of principle I heartily endorse the idea.  There is a lot of
> functional hardware out there that does not do PAE, but still has life left
> in it.

Is it worth it? The first reviews on that hardware are almost 7 years
old. For the time time you spend backporting and integrating modern
components to it, you could probably pay for a newer and more powerful
laptop, even doing burger-flipping. And that support time is quite
expensive: with Fedora already a year ahead of SL 6.0, the creeping
incompatibilites are going to bite anyone using it.

(I'm one of the people around long enough, in enough old projects, to
get called on to integrate them to new environments. It helps pay
bills.)