Re: Linux distro request
- From: Rugxulo <rugxulo@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 15:14:18 -0700 (PDT)
Hi,
On Apr 9, 1:59 pm, Frank Kotler <fbkot...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rod Pemberton wrote:
"Rugxulo" <rugx...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:f1800076-532c-4be3-801f-83edbd89d8c4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ZipSlack swears to be usable on 8 MB (or even 4 MB with swapfile), but
I've never tried (yet??). If you really want low RAM, maybe you should
try Minix?? It's got a lot of GNU utils now (and 3.x series has a
liveCD). BTW, I assume you're aware of the older DOSMinix (2.0.4), but
that's fairly slow.
Wow, I forgot about ZipSlack... I remember trying it, but I can't seem to
recall when that was or what happened. :(
ZipSlack was my first introduction to Linux. (first that "took" at all)
The "Zip" is from the old Iomega "Zip drive" - a 100MB removable medium
- although it's "zipped", too. IIRC, it'll actually fit in about 40MB.
Not anymore. 11.0 is a 70 MB .ZIP (totaling 138 MB), and supposedly
(?) FAT32 (e.g. FreeDOS or MS-DOS 7.x) saves you lots of space instead
of FAT16 (cluster size?). I dunno, downloaded it but never tried it.
The .ZIP (once touched to latest filedate) is from Sep. 29, 2006.
Makes a very full-featured "rescue disk" - I kept it around after I'd
installed a "real" Linux partition. That was FAT16, I think. May work on
FAT32 these days.
In the #puppylinux IRC chatroom, somebody there uses it on FAT32
(though I forget who exactly).
Doubt if it works on NTFS.
No because UMSDOS is built into the 2.4.x ZipSlack kernel, which
allows you to store all the Linux files on FAT, but not NTFS. It was
dropped from 2.6.x due to lack of maintainer (or so they claim, DOS
haters!).
If anyone's got space on an
appropriate partition, it makes a nice gentle introduction to Linux. May
or may not be any part of what you want...
Dunno, but it can't be that bad. (At least, no worse than some other
distros, meh.) Assuming it's easy to set up, you could just recompile
what you needed.
and won't know until burned
There was a gizmo in... "Vector" Linux (a "cut down" Slackware), which
allowed me to boot an installation disk straight from the .iso, without
having to burn it to a "coaster".
Smart Boot Manager??
I *think* that's where I saw it. IIRC,
I couldn't get it to work except on that one image. Involved, as root,
going into "single-user mode"... apparently undoes some of the
"protection" so you can boot into something else ("restart in dos
mode"???). I don't think this is what you mean when you say "no
multi-user", but it might have potential for "trying things out" without
actually "making coasters".
Despite what you hear, "Don't run everything as root!", people do it.
I've seen a few distros do it, too. Of course, it's hard to mess up
anything booted via liveCD and with nothing important mounted
and booted if it will release or unmount the CD,
or work with the low memory...
May be a conflict there. If you're gonna unmount the CD, everything's
gotta be on ramdisk, no? An "unlive" boot might be better on memory(???).
GCC (and core-utils, etc.) would probably take more than 32 MB of
storage space.
Excepting that I forgot to check VFAT and
make etc., it looks real good so far.
NTFS, even if only readonly, would also be cool. Not on your list, as I
recall, but... That, too, may conflict with "low memory". Unless I'm
mistaken, these things were originally developed as "add ons" to kernels
that didn't support 'em, so it might be possible to shoehorn 'em into an
earlier kernel that will be easier on memory. Probably you can find
something "close enough" without having to resort to that.
The 32 MB machine is probably from the Win9x era, and none of those
used NTFS, AFAICT. So, that's probably moot.
I'll let you know how things turn out. I might not try until the weekend.
I was thinking of you during my adventures with Slackware 12.0. First I
tried to install 4.5GB of software onto a 3.5GB partition. I knew it
wouldn't work, but I expected it to holler "disk full" somewhere in the
middle of X - and I don't care if X works, I just wanted to see if I
could kill the loader. :) (yes)
Once again, I must mention all the big three *BSDs, none of which
require or come with X by default.
Next try was a "custom install". You can create a "minimal" system even
from an "everything but the kitchen sink" distro. For example, there's
more to gcc than gcc! Support for C++, Java, Ada, and god knows what
else are separate packages from the "base" gcc package (they're all
"huge", IMO). Same with most of it. There are "dependencies", of course..
You'll probably only need C and C++ support to recompile stuff. (And
man, do I wish there were more static binaries.)
All the kernels with Slackware 12.0 have "huge" in the name. There's a
note in one of the READMEs "good luck getting a useful 2.6 kernel onto a
1.44" [sic! :)] floppy". IIRC, earlier distros included some "low
memory" kernels. I'll look back and see what the propaganda claimed
they'd do... if I can stay focused that long...
UPX can pack (but not unpack??) both bvmlinuz/386 and vmlinuz/386
(bootable Linux kernels). From UPX.DOC:
" For example, this is what I get for my 2.2.16 kernel:
1589708 vmlinux
641073 bzImage [original]
560755 bzImage.upx [compressed by "upx -9"]
- Much faster decompression at kernel boot time (but kernel
decompression speed is not really an issue these days).
"
For the record, when I was playing around (6 months ago?) with a DSL
install on an old recycled PC of my brother's (which has since
disappeared), the first thing I did was get NASM, FASM, p7zip, UPX,
compile BIEW and TDE and newer TCC and HTE, and add DOSBox, as well as
GCC (but never could get Dungeon Crawl to compile ... no matter, I
could telnet to crawl.akrasiac.org instead).
At the extreme end of the spectrum, there's that "alinux" distro which
uses the "asmutils" utilities. A one-floppy job, but a little *too*
spartan to be useful... except as a "proof of concept", perhaps.
If you want spartan, you can use tomsrtbt (2.2.20ext3), but it's a 1.7
MB overformatted floppy and not updated in > 5 years. It only has wget
and telnet.
The other alternative is BlueFlops (2.6.18), which is two floppies and
has www (links via SVGALIB, links_text), IRC (rhapsody), and telnet.
(Last updated on Nov. 27, 2006.) But it (also?) uses uClibc and
busybox (which apparently R.P. dislikes.)
http://www.toms.net/rb/
http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/
Neither is good for full-time use, but they could be quite nice in a
pinch.
You can probably find something "close enough" to what you want, but if
not, you "should" be able to do pretty much anything, if you're
ambitious enough... (ambition is nice... I'm told... :)
It will be hard to get anyone to help you. All Linux distros these
days shun anything < 128 MB (or more, even). The *BSDs seem much more
space conscious, but they are more geared towards small manual
installs instead of live CDs (sorta like ZipSlack, I guess ...
although on their own partition).
P.S. For the record, I know we're discussing Linux (mostly), but I
*have* to point out a few other (very small) OSes that I find quite
useful (and yes, they all run on 32 MB or less of RAM):
http://octavio.vega.fernandez.googlepages.com/octaos
http://rugxulo.googlepages.com (unofficial FreeDOS)
http://www.menuetos.net
.
- References:
- [OT]Windows 95
- From: XM
- Re: [OT]Windows 95
- From: Rod Pemberton
- Re: Windows 95
- From: Rugxulo
- Re: Linux distro request
- From: Rod Pemberton
- Re: Linux distro request
- From: Rugxulo
- Re: Linux distro request
- From: Rod Pemberton
- Re: Linux distro request
- From: Rugxulo
- Re: Linux distro request
- From: Rod Pemberton
- Re: Linux distro request
- From: Frank Kotler
- [OT]Windows 95
- Prev by Date: Re: the loop with while
- Next by Date: Re: the loop with while
- Previous by thread: Re: Linux distro request
- Next by thread: Re: Linux distro request
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
