With the move could come an XFCE-4 or IceWM base. XFCE4 seems to take up about 50 megs, and barely bringing its own file manager; compressed (debs) it starts out at 12.5M. 14.3 with the artwork. 700k more compressed deb packages with appropriate plug-ins. The artwork for XFCE (xfce-artwork) can probably be dropped; so compressed the base is about 13.2M for the XFCE environment, which includes a file manager.
IceWM brings with it just a desktop environment that looks like Windows by default, in 4M (888k compressed as debs). This is at least a better way to ease-in new users, especially those who would look at DSL and go "WTF?!" For its size, DSL is great as a demo, and perhaps should be mindful of that. XFCE can also be configured to have a "start menu" and task bar, however.
XFCE may be better simply because it brings a decent file manager with it. I don't know of any nice ones aside from Nautilus and Konqueror, with XFFM holding its ground pretty well.
To base on XFCE4, DSL could look like the following: GDE: xfce-4 (13.2M) Terminal, File Manager, Window Manager, Desktop File manager: xffm (with xfce-4) Terminal: xfterm (with xfce-4) Browser: firefox (8.8M) E-Mail: thunderbird (10.9M) RSS: thunderbird (above) Media playing: beep-media-player (1.0M) Graphics: gimp (4.8M) PDF: xpdf (1.8M) Word Processor: abiword (4.2M with plug-ins) Spreadsheet: gnumeric (4.0M) IM: gaim (1.5M with encryption, extprefs, and guifications) FTP: gftp (0.4M)
That all totals 50.4M. Dumping e-mail (thunderbird) and sticking with Liferea for RSS gives 1.1M instead of 10.9, leaving the total at 40.8. Just staying with Firefox (which can do RSS limitedly) gives 39.7M.
The condensed view is: GDE: xfce-4 (13.2M) Terminal, File Manager, Window Manager, Desktop File manager: xffm (with xfce-4) Terminal: xfterm (with xfce-4) Browser: firefox (8.8M) Media playing: beep-media-player (1.0M) Graphics: gimp (4.8M) PDF: xpdf (1.8M) Word Processor: abiword (4.2M with plug-ins) Spreadsheet: gnumeric (4.0M) IM: gaim (1.5M with encryption, extprefs, and guifications) FTP: gftp (0.4M)
This of course leaves no video player or DVD player or CD burner. It also leaves only about 10 megs for the underlying system. A custom-built system may be needed with gcc's -Os to shrink things down, and PNG images should be post-passed with optipng to try to gain a few compressed kilobytes. Still, I think it's a nice idea, as the result would look much more prettified.
The other route is much more laxed: aim at the 180M mini CDs. This isn't really the best route, because then they wouldn't burn to business cards. I like things I can carry in my wallet.Hell no.
GTK2 might be "prettier", but it's a whole lot fatter compared to gtk1...it's not an upgrade as far as I'm concerned...it's a whole new gui set, and not really any better.
If you really think more thoroughly about what you're saying, you might notice that your suggestions would turn DSL into the opposite of its goal. DSL is a general-purpose distro attempting to fit as much as possible within 50mb. If it went to gtk2 you'd have to rip out most of the applications and you're left with a very limited and specific system.
Replacing the small applications in the current dsl with the comparatively enormous ones you suggest would kill DSL...it might continue to be damn small if everything else was removed, but it would be useful only to a small portion of the population.
Xfce might be small compared to KDE, but it's monstrous compared to the apps included in DSL...same with Thunderbird and Gimp.
You also have to consider that the X-based applications are not the whole system. When you add the Base GNU/Linux system, plus all of the scripts and other terminal apps necessary for a useful system, your new disk will be well over 50mb.
It's my opinion that what you are proposing might be a decent system, but it won't be DSL, and i doubt it will be damn small.Yeah, it's nice to have all of that stuff in 50MB
But you need to include the OS itself in there somewhere.
Like Linux + utils + scripts + X Windows system etc
I have a better idea.
Why don't you create *.dsl extensions for these additions. Then, people can easily add them to the base iso if desired.
Check out the icewm.dsl extension for an example.
Otherwise, if you want to remaster the base iso you can either do it yourself or you can try Liut Linux, which is a project that is similar to the one in your post.
Quote (mikshaw @ April 29 2005,23:19)
Hell no.
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Hell no.
Right On!
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With the move could come an XFCE-4 or IceWM base.
ewww..
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a desktop environment that looks like Windows by default,
ewww..
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the result would look much more prettified.
Perhaps, but would it make DSL more functional? flexible? faster? Would this "increase" the popularity of DSL if we disregard the 486 and P1 users?
