DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: wish list, 2.6



Quote (^thehatsrule^ @ April 28 2008,13:25)
Quote (roberts @ April 27 2008,22:29)
I want to try to address many of the older computers that DSL has traditionally targeted. The most often reason cited, from those who know frugal yet still perform traditional hard drive installation, is the slowness from running from compressed read-only images. I now find myself experiencing such with the very large Firefox v2. [...]
How will the base livecd be structured?  Will it be compressed?  If so, would it be decompressed to a 'map' when a frugal installation occurs?

Just curious if these parts have been finalized yet.

Good question.  I am mainly concentrating on making the core as small as possible and work with much of the DSL basics. Many have suggested that a non-desktop is not useful, therefore some iso should be made available with some collection(s) of useful desktop apps. The catch-22 is that the useful desktop apps come from the community. I don't think you would want me to spend the time to recreate many of them. Saying this, I am somewhat divorced from a combined iso. The answer depends on how the user would use tiny core. With large ram systems the 'other apps' could be .dsl. They could be highly compressed maps to be 'installed' (uncompressed and copied) onto writable media. Or they could be a collection of .map to be mounted and used. Note the fact that such maps on CD would mean read-only and the cdrom could not be removed. At the moment I am more interested in having writable apps be they .dsl or .map on supporting media. Although both you and Curaga bring up valid points. Perhaps the combined iso should be left up to the user depending on needs.
why don't you drop one of the window-managers and replace the 2.4 kernel with an actual 2.6 kernel?
Quote
why don't you drop one of the window-managers and replace the 2.4 kernel with an actual 2.6 kernel?

An "actual" kernel? The 2.4 one is an actual kernel.

Among other reasons...
1. 2.6 won't fit in 50MB without removing more applications.
2. The window managers are quite small, so dropping them both wouldn't make a dent big enough to use 2.6 unless it were pared way down to about the present config. Then there would be all the issues with it still not supporting newer hardware. The issue isn't supporting the same old hardware DSL has always supported, it's about moving forward and supporting newer hardware as well. That requires balancing things so that you get more support even if it's at the initial expense of having fewer applications.
3. Updating to 2.6 would necessitate updating a lot of the underlying toolchain. Otherwise we're looking at duplicating the present problems often encountered when compiling recent software on older libs.

In short, it's not exactly a matter of switching out kernels. It requires some compromises.
Quote (tagori @ April 30 2008,05:49)
why don't you drop one of the window-managers and replace the 2.4 kernel with an actual 2.6 kernel?

If it were only that simple. We need much newer libs and there is much newer technology for the new version to be based upon.
hello

i want to use damn small linux on the asus eee-pc.  this combination would be an ideal 'surfstation' (secure and very fast). but the problem is that the wireless lan resp. the webcam does not work. the eee pc uses nearly the same wlan card then a supported card:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki...._Box.22

a custom version of dsl would be very nice! why dont u make a custom version?

regards, alex
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