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An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy

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Re: An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy

#31

Post by enneff »

znpy wrote: post #7

“Floppydistros” were a thing back in the day. When i was 12 or 13 in the very early 2000s i tried to download something called “coyote linux” (from sourceforge iirc) and boot it on an internet cafe pc because i really wanted to try this linux thing. But i was very nooby and of course it mostly didn’t go anywhere. I have vague memories of maybe getting it to boot, getting a shell and then not know what to do with it.…

I used to run tomsrtbt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomsrtbt) from a floppy on an old 486 hooked up to a monitor and keyboard for use as a terminal. Was nice and silent, pretty convenient to be able to just turn the screen on to check irc or whatever.

Re: An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy

#34

Post by charcircuit »

dcminter wrote: post #19
muppetman wrote: post #11

I wonder why it needs 20MB minimum. Back in the day linux 2.0.33 would boot happily into a GUI and everything on an 8MB machine. Or maybe I misremember... I know my machine at the time got upgraded to 24MB so maybe it was that machine I was running. Anyway it's neat this can still be done.

You could run X11 in 4Mb at one point, although I rather wished I didn't.

That's not even big enough to hold a single 1080p framebuffer.

Re: An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy

#35

Post by queenkjuul »

muppetman wrote: post #11

I wonder why it needs 20MB minimum. Back in the day linux 2.0.33 would boot happily into a GUI and everything on an 8MB machine. Or maybe I misremember... I know my machine at the time got upgraded to 24MB so maybe it was that machine I was running. Anyway it's neat this can still be done.

I had 2.2.x running on my 386 last year in 4MB. Not enough for a full GUI though but enough to set up TCP/IP and Samba to image a drive over the network.

8MB, at least in an emulator, can run a basic Xterm but not a lot else (though it'll happily run as a remote X frontend for a more powerful machine over Ethernet, it was fun to see it try to render Gimp 3 running on my desktop lol)

My 16MB 486 had no issues with a full IceWM session (this was kind of my hacked version of BasicLinux which itself was built on a ~2000 version of Slackware)

Re: An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy

#36

Post by queenkjuul »

kjs3 wrote: post #17
muppetman wrote: post #11

I wonder why it needs 20MB minimum. Back in the day linux 2.0.33 would boot happily into a GUI and everything on an 8MB machine. Or maybe I misremember... I know my machine at the time got upgraded to 24MB so maybe it was that machine I was running. Anyway it's neat this can still be done.

I think you could run 2.0 + X11 in 4MB in a pinch. I know I ran 2.2 + X11 in 5MB on a cast-off i386SX; tight but useable. If I recall right, 2.0 & 2.2 would run in 2MB without X11 (but a GUI like MGR might fit). 8MB was pretty good and 16MB was positively spacious. Edit: Add: 2MB/4MB boot with a stripped down kernel, not generic.

I got 2.2 with BusyBox to consume ~2200K at boot after a lot of fiddling. Left me plenty of user space for doing command line work on my 4MB 386; i mentioned in another comment though, X was only really useful as a remote terminal in 4MB, to run a local program via X pretty much required 8MB. But pretty sure i got Doom running in X on 8MB...

I did all these experiments a year or two ago. I lost most of my work due to a hard drive failure (the one in my workstation, not the 386 lol) but all the surviving work is on my github:

https://github.com/queenkjuul/basiclinux-lcars

Re: An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy

#37

Post by queenkjuul »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #18
littlecranky67 wrote: post #2

I remember around 2002 running my home router without any hdd on fli4l - a single floppy linux router distribution. I slept in the same room as the router was, hence I wanted a solution without a noisy hdd from that era.

There was also tomsrtbt[1], which was a staple in my "rescue" floppy collection. Along with the QNX floppy[2], which came in super handy when using a cyber café or a friend's PC, and you wanted to avoid all the keyloggers and malware. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomsrtbt [2] http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html

Every time i pull out my tomsrtbt floppy i try to pronounce tomsrtbt in my head and it's always different

Re: An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy

#40

Post by avian »

charcircuit wrote: post #34
dcminter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could run X11 in 4Mb at one point, although I rather wished I didn't.

That's not even big enough to hold a single 1080p framebuffer.

The Compaq laptop I was using had a 486SX and 4 MB of RAM. It had a 640x480 (if I remember correctly) screen and I'm pretty sure the framebuffer was in a separate video RAM that was not counted in that 4 MB. Used to type a lot of LaTeX on that laptop and used X11 for previews - xfree86 even had a special driver for the specific video hardware that laptop had. Not sure if I used a window manager. I think I just pointed ghostscript at the X11 screen from a text-mode console.
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