Hi Rugxulo, > Almost definitely doesn't fit on floppy anymore, not since 2.2.0 or > such. Even 2.4.x branch is basically (officially?) dead now.
Yes a modern Linux kernel and initrd (boot time ramdisk with basic tools and drivers loaded before the harddisk is accessed further) can easily be 5 and 20 MB respectively and I think that even when you only keep those drivers that are needed exactly for your PC, it will probably not fit on 2.88 MB or 1.44 MB at all. At least a 2.4 kernel will already have SOME support for USB, probably still better than the USB support in DOS, but do not expect to run your TV receiver USB stick from a single floppy Linux either... :-p >> On the other side, there are numerous single (or double) floppy Linux >> distributions already available, so why not use one of those... >> >> http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/ > > All of those are extremely old, barely work (buggy), and abandoned. I > don't even need to look anymore, I just know that nobody cares... Not necessarily, it is just that you cannot fit all the brand new bells and whistles on the constantly small size of classic floppies. The linuxlinks list is pretty interesting, it shows what you can do with a small Linux and gives an idea why people actually want small Linuxes: To repair or tune things, often filesystems, to turn an old PC into something "embedded" (a router, modem, networked harddisk, firewall, wireless router, print server, ISDN router, etc etc). My personal opinion is that a "real" router, modem or NAS uses far less electricity, is much smaller, and has a friendly price - there is no need to use a big old PC for such things). Also to have some basic universal tool, network client, terminal or similar. The list has a two floppy graphical web browser Linux (blueflops, SourceForge page shows MySQL error, does anybody have another URL for Blueflops?) as well as some hardware oriented stuff (Hamradio, SMART disk status). Of course because there are tiny network client Linux distros, tiny network server Linuxes are also on the list. Note that DOS can do the same, with clients for ssh, ftp, smb and servers for http etc. Unfortunately the only two GRAPHICAL floppy Linux homepages listed seem to be down: Blueflops, a two floppy Linux with graphical web browser, and Xwoaf, X-Window System on a Floppy. A typical rescue system / tool Linux seems to be BG-Rescue: http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/BG-Rescue-Linux-15991.shtml http://www.fdlinux.com/ is probably another typical example: A Linux with 2.4 kernel on one 1.68 MB floppy... But USB floppy drives have problems with non-1.44 MB formats and you cannot get USB sticks with less than 1 GB anymore anyway, so actual FLOPPY Linuxes feel a bit pointless on non-ancient hardware. For comparison, Georg's DOS port of the graphical web browser Dillo takes more than 2 MB for the EXE file alone and needs a 2 MB set of fonts even in the basic version. You can imagine that a graphical web browser that fits on ONE floppy would be very limited in features, no matter if DOS or Linux was used. For Arachne, a not very user friendly browser but with extra "web suite" features (contains a mail client etc, I think?) the download is only 1.5 MB, but it is somewhat larger after you install it. For a long time, it was more or less the only useful free and open GRAPHICAL web browser for DOS at all... Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
