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Interesting fact is that DSL used to be 50MB because that’s how big a business-card sized CDs were. And yes, there used to be business-card sized CDs.
For anyone else interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootable_business_card
Woah, now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time! It says that it fits on a CD, but how about the other requirements? e.g. how much RAM is needed, and what kind of instruction set does the CPU need to support? is a 386 enough or do you need 486/586/686 level instructions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damn_Small_Linux#Versions_and_...
A truly damn small Linux is the xwoaf rebuild project 4.0 https://pupngo.dk/xwinflpy/xwoaf_rebuild.html >The forth version of xwoaf-rebuild is containing a lot of applications contained in only two binaries: busybox and mcb_xawplus. You get xcalc, xcalendar, xfilemanager, xminesweep, chimera, xed, xsetroot, xcmd, xinit, menu, jwm, desklaunch, rxvt, xtet42, torsmo, djpeg, xban2, text2pdf, Xvesa, xsnap, xmessage, xvl,…
So uh, who's gonna be first to get it running on a Pi Pico?
The "damn small" linux has 2 windows managers and 3 browsers. Doesn't look like it's small, looks like it's a collection of things the author enjoys.
Program sizes have ballooned by an order of magnitude or more, so unfortunately so must DSL's target size if it expects to retain feature-parity, but it's still a lot of bang for one's disk-space buck by the looks of it.
I just checked Wikipedia, and was surprised to see the original DSL only had releases for about 3.5 years. > Though it may seem comparably ridiculous that 700MB is small in 2024 when DSL was 50MB in 2002 If you go all the way back to 2002, 50 MB for an old computer wasn't that small. I bought a new computer with 192 MB of RAM as late as 2005. My 32-bit, $400 discount laptop from 2009 has 4 GB of RAM, so 700 MB is rea…
I remember running Linux Router Project [0] on a 1.44mb floppy disk back in the late 90s! Of course, it didn't have a GUI, but I don't think you could even fit the linux kernel on a single floppy disk today. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Router_Project
Interesting fact is that DSL used to be 50MB because that’s how big a business-card sized CDs were. And yes, there used to be business-card sized CDs.
Wow, this is crazy. I came across the DSL website last night while trying to figure out how to compile a minimal Linux kernel myself, and now here it is on HN! I used DSL back in high school when it was new. As a side note, why does compiling Linux have to be so... obtuse? It just stops for me after several minutes of building out objects with no explanation.
Are you looking to build just a minimal kernel or also a minimal distribution? (Which is what I happened to be thinking about last night :)) In the latter case, do you know any good resources about that topic?
A truly damn small Linux is the xwoaf rebuild project 4.0 https://pupngo.dk/xwinflpy/xwoaf_rebuild.html >The forth version of xwoaf-rebuild is containing a lot of applications contained in only two binaries: busybox and mcb_xawplus. You get xcalc, xcalendar, xfilemanager, xminesweep, chimera, xed, xsetroot, xcmd, xinit, menu, jwm, desklaunch, rxvt, xtet42, torsmo, djpeg, xban2, text2pdf, Xvesa, xsnap, xmessage, xvl,…