On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, David Given wrote:
Aside from the fact that the E3 has more memory than the first machine I ran X on
Oh really. Yeah, X11 has changed a bit since I ran it on a 2Mbyte machine with a 30MHz processor.
, I'm quite aware of its limitations. I don't want to run X. What I
*do* want to do is to run headless Debian; building a distribution is a significantly bigger and more complex job than is really worth doing, and using a known good distribution that runs on the ARM will save vast, vast quantities of grief.
No, it won't, because, and this is the important part, it won't fit into the only fast backing store you have available. Trust me- I've built more ARM-based appliances than you can shake a stick at, and I've used a tiny distribution every time. And, yes- I did run server software. I even ran a java VM on one particular (8Mbyte!) platform. You just need to make sure the server software is appropriate to the hardware- saying "oh well I just need to use some swap" isn't the answer. Your project will not end happily.
-J.