high-end CPUs have more cache than that !
Damn Small Linux 2024
61–70 of 185 posts
Re: Damn Small Linux 2024
#62I used DSL back around when it was released (and 64 MiB flash drives were common) to get around my school's network filtering. I think this was one of the reasons they hired new IT staff the following year, because the technique caught on even with the non-nerdy crowd.
Yes, this brings back such memories for me too! I also used to boot from removable media to use linux on school computers. The librarian assumed I was some kind of computer hacker and reported me to the schools IT admin. I thought I was in trouble. Instead he took me under his wing and had me work with him after school on some fun projects! Really helped me understand that the skills I was learning were valuable and that I had an aptitude for it.
Re: Damn Small Linux 2024
#63I had the Linux kernel and some simple user-space tools like busybox running on an embedded platform with 512 kB RAM and 2MB flash back in 1999! Those were fun times. To be honest 512 kb was possible but very on the limit, I think the product we launched with it had a few megs of RAM eventually. We had to invent a journalling flash filesystem as well in order to make it work in practice, something that didn't exist back then either. But Linux then was really a breakthrough compared to the horrible mess of embedded OSes that were needed otherwise to handle TCP/IP, filesystems and multitasking.
Re: Damn Small Linux 2024
#64Re: Damn Small Linux 2024
#65AbiWord seems like an odd choice for a word processor— it seems to be virtually obsolete.
Is there anything newer that isn't absurdly bloated?
Re: Damn Small Linux 2024
#66A 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,…
I think it's possible to get Windows 7 Ultimate down below 2GB, so a comparatively impressive Linux build should definitely be a lot smaller.
windows PE is way smaller, boots live around ~250 MB in size. Of course without any namely applications.
Re: Damn Small Linux 2024
#67A 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?
Pico is a microcontroller whose Cortex-M0+ cores lack a memory management unit for virtual memory (considered essential for a full-fledged OS like Linux). But can run FreeRTOS on it...memory usages are 236 bytes for the scheduler, 76 bytes + queue storage area for each queue, and 64 bytes plus task stack size for each task, plus 5 to 10 KBytes of ROM.[1]
Re: Damn Small Linux 2024
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's possible to get Windows 7 Ultimate down below 2GB, so a comparatively impressive Linux build should definitely be a lot smaller.
windows PE is way smaller, boots live around ~250 MB in size. Of course without any namely applications.
If it can run a browser, I'm sold.
Re: Damn Small Linux 2024
#69I had the Linux kernel and some simple user-space tools like busybox running on an embedded platform with 512 kB RAM and 2MB flash back in 1999! Those were fun times. To be honest 512 kb was possible but very on the limit, I think the product we launched with it had a few megs of RAM eventually. We had to invent a journalling flash filesystem as well in order to make it work in practice, something that didn't exist b…
All the WRT54G(L) derivatives were an example of this minimalism, with some versions running on 2MB flash and 8MB RAM.
The 512k is impressive.