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> .out binary format was amazing - binaries used MUCH less memory, and were faster in general in comparison to modern "ELF".

I'd be interested in seeing this claim backed by some data. I remember running Monkey Linux (ELF-based, libc5; it might have been a Slackware derivative) on a 4-meg 486SX/33; it ran quite smoothly (until you tried to run X).

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You might be right that it was not due the a.out format alone. Now I remember that at the same time there was some huge migration from libc5 to glibc!

Maybe it was composition of libc5 + a.out + egcs that gave us speed(no swappng) back then.

I might do some benchmark on "PCEM" emulator (only proper emulator for old hardware as it retains original speed of cpu, memory and hard drives) in my spare time.

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