Hi,
On May 2, 2012 5:43 PM, "Eric Auer" <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote:
>
>
> 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.
I think a full kernel with all drivers is like 30 MB. I can't check now
(heavy rain makes me a bit leery), but I think my Lucid Puppy's kernel
(2.6.33 or such) is only 2.5 MB (compressed??), and presumably UPX would
shrink it more. Though even with that and initrd, you'd still need a lot of
config files, maybe?? Bash, and who knows what the minimal amount of RAM it
needs (128?) before borking. And that's before actually doing anything.
I know some people hate BIOS (and DOS), but keep in mind that you need
anywhere from 128 to 512 to 1024 MB *minimally* to do anything useful in
most modern OSes (sadly). Though perhaps FreeBSD is better nowadays (no X11
by default, single distro not counting PC-BSD), dunno. (I think in theory
FreeBSD is as capable as we would want in most cases, too, though obviously
DOSEMU port hasn't been kept up in a long time but could still work, in
theory).
> > 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.
It's not so much that. You can barely fit a common Linux on a 1 GB jump
drive either. They just don't care for minimalism (or don't know how).
> 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).
Well, you gotta recycle hardware somehow. If not with FreeDOS (random
programming or games), something. Anything is better than letting it rot in
a closet, no?
But you have a point. BTW, my latest ISP-provided router is also a DSL
modem and gateway, simplifies things a bit (which is good since it's all
VERY confusing to me).
> 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?)
You mean "503, Guru meditation"? A lot of SF main pages do that. But
http://sf.net/projects/blueflops/files/ still has it (2006 ftw!! Heheh,
see, nobody cares, sadly. All the world's a bloatware [except BareMetal]).
> 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.
I guess we really do need to migrate towards a DOS-friendly Linux distro
(though we might have to do it from scratch). Though I'm sure most of us
already use multiple OSes and computers. I guess the days of just using
Windows for DOS support are long over.
N.B. I'm not really planning anything myself here, just thinking aloud
(after various amounts of useless tinkering.
> 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.
Ugh, I think XWoaf is even much older than BlueFlops. Face it, nobody
targets old computers anymore, esp. not with Linux. I hate to generalize,
but most Linux developers are quite trendy and just throw billions of
features atop everything. They "know the value of everything but the cost
of nothing" (paraphrased).
I don't think it's a crime to change requirements, but it is indeed hard to
follow when things change so quickly. If even 512 MB isn't enough anymore
.... Yes, desktops have GBs, but it's not wrong to not "need" that much.
Just using 500 MB of RAM is not a virtue in itself. I don't know' it's a
mess. You'll be lucky to get five years (or three??) out of any hardware or
software these days. Long term support isn't very long these days.
> 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.
Well, just download speed, disk usage, or RAM minimally required is
probably more pressing. Sadly, these tend to get lumped together and
unfairly penalize those who should have no such worries.
Anyways, there is always room for improvement (libc, compression, assembly,
slimmer alternatives, scripting, etc). So don't consider any of these
totally finalized. You can tweak things infinitely if passionate enough.
But always being told, "It's not worth it" (whether true or not) is
discouraging. Optimism (hope) and sheer joy (fun) is why we're self-made
geeks in the first place. "Can it be done? Wouldn't that be cool? Isn't it
a shame that it doesn't do xyz?"
> 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.
Static linking, no smart linker to strip out the unused bits, various
dependencies, also not compressed optimally. So it's still big but
variable, can be tweaked, not set in stone. (Though I agree trying to cram
on floppy may not be totally fun here, heheh.)
> 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...
Arachne is awesome but abandoned though Ray may?? still work on his forked
version. Obviously could use some more TLC to fix some issues, but all
projects are like that. Developers just have maybe (gasp) "too many"
competing options these days.
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