Quote from the Archwiki (Installation guide):
Arch Linux should run on any x86_64-compatible machine with a minimum of 512 MiB RAM, though more memory is needed to boot the live system for installation. A basic installation should take less than 2 GiB of disk space.
Does that mean it is technically possible to get a Windows XP-era device with 512 Mb RAM and install Arch on it by pulling out the hard drive, connecting it to a modern machine via a SATA to usb connector, for example, with the modern machine running the live environment, and then just partitioning and installing on the old computer HDD, then putting the hdd back on the old computer? Is something like that feasible? I don’t have a machine to test it on, but it certainly sounds like a fun experiment. It sort of reminds me of the stories of Gentoo cross-compiling.
Edit: It is a HYPOTHETICAL question. Please focus on the METHOD and IMPLEMENTATION instead of 32-bit compatibility or driver issues.
I used to have an USB stick with Ubundu on it, so I see no reason that it shouldn’t be possible. But idk how drivers would work.
Also I would check how much RAM is needed to boot the live ISO (not during the process). If it is low enough, you can use swap.
512 m ram dunno, but I had an old 10 yo+ dual core / 4 gb ram laptop on arch working well, except for gaming. Just replaced it with ghostbsd, also fluid.
The requirement for x86_64 eliminates most XP era machines, though I was certainly running XP well into the Vista era on potentially compatible hardware.
How old are you thinking?
Wouldn’t most of those old computers be 32 bit? I remember trying to throw arch on an old winxp netbook and running into that issue.
I think so, yeah.
Though Alpine would be probably easier to get going given the super tiny size.
