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Damn Small Linux 2024

damnsmalllinux.org

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Re: Damn Small Linux 2024

#101

Post by ogurechny »

userabchn wrote: post #88
ogurechny wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so much old hardware Not so much, actually. When you aim for anything that resembles modern “desktop computing” (maybe with at least some “web browsing”), you are limited to decent hardware configurations from last 15 years or so. Yes, you can show to your grand-grand-grandkids how it really was back in the days once, but you are not going to study the splash screens while programs initialize, or wait for each imag…

The computer I use most of the time is a 19 year old (2005) laptop. I run Debian with LXDE and Firefox on it and, although you have to be a little bit patient with some websites, I am generally still very satisfied with it.

I suppose it's a desktop replacement model with desktop Pentium 4 and whole 2 GB of memory which cost thousands of dollars? Regular Pentium Ms of the era get dangerously close to netbook Atoms in performance, which is certainly the bottom of the barrel.

Re: Damn Small Linux 2024

#103

Post by rzzzt »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #67
moffkalast wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] [1] https://freertos.org/FAQMem.html

ELKS supported MMU-less operation on 8088 and 80286 machines, but I don't think an ARM port exists: https://github.com/ghaerr/elks

Re: Damn Small Linux 2024

#105

Post by meonkeys »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #29

Downloading at ~100KB/s... hitting the front page of HN is probably a good usecase for bittorrent.

Mine went fast. Happy to share:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:6285b37e9f968526f953c714993ff2f76c6a4d29&dn=dsl-2024.alpha.iso&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969

Hopefully that magnet URI works. This is the first time I've tried to create one. Hopefully the tracker works too, I seem to be getting intermittent "Connection failed" errors from it. If anyone already knows how to properly serve torrents, please school me. :-)

Size is 698126336 bytes. Checksum is at https://damnsmalllinux.org/download/dsl-2024.alpha.iso.md5.t... (looks like they only have an MD5 checksum posted).

Re: Damn Small Linux 2024

#107

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #74
moffkalast wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I figured there might be a rub somewhere otherwise it would already be a thing, but since it's technically an ARM it sounded vaguely promising. What about a 32 bit build? I think those used to be able to work with without virtual addresses.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/190350/mmu-less-ker...

aha, and this reminds me about μClinux [1] which targets microcontrollers without a MMU. I installing it on 2005 iPod Classic 5G, and was able to then put a gameboy emulator on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9CClinux

Re: Damn Small Linux 2024

#108

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #107
NegativeLatency wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/190350/mmu-less-ker...

aha, and this reminds me about μClinux [1] which targets microcontrollers without a MMU. I installing it on 2005 iPod Classic 5G, and was able to then put a gameboy emulator on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9CClinux

Though μClinux project seems dead, however the key component of that is a ELF to bFLT (binary flat) converter [1] for no-mmu Linux targets, which is alive on github [2].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120301074213/https://retired.b... [2] https://github.com/uclinux-dev/elf2flt

Re: Damn Small Linux 2024

#109

Post by makerdiety »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #77
anthk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building and shipping new machines requires far more envionmental related costs.

Plus just earning the money to buy the new hardware is bad enough.

So, for the sake of "the environment," the solution is to go backwards? Stop working and stuff?

Re: Damn Small Linux 2024

#110

Post by gorkish »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #67
moffkalast wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] [1] https://freertos.org/FAQMem.html

The popular way to shorehorn modern linux onto a MMU-less microcontroller is to build a a RISC V system emulator and run uClinux on that; you can also emulate the MMU and run regular kernels if you have sufficient resources. It has been done on ESP32 with sufficient RAM; Pico would need additional hardware though in the form of something like QSPI RAM, and of course it would be very slow.
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