Damn Small Linux - Not!

dreamcarrior · Joined: 27 Aug 2006 Posts: 3

I think DSL has been doing well in the past few years in that the team has been keeping this distro impossibly small but working well. Although here comes to the point that if we are going to incorporate the new technology such as wireless LAN and the new software that is based on the new kernel 2.6 and newer, we will definitely have to loose the limit of 50 MB of this distro. However, the most appealing distro like DSL is that it is thus-far the smallest distro in the world.

So here we have two directions to go,
1. Should we re-limit the size of DSL-N to 100 MB (instead of 50 MB). This size limit shall totally depends on if we can make DSL fully functionable by covering what the previous DSL can do and include the new kernel and Wireless LAN module. This means the older machines will not be able to adapt this version if they do not meet the memory requirement.

2. Or secondly find a way to modulize the kernel in that if we can develop a method to hot insert or remove the module so that we can manipulate the kernel after the boot-up, then we can load any kernel module that we need through .uci or .dsl or other similar extensions. If this is doable, then we can still limit the size of DSL-N and make it impossibly small like always and run impossibly well.

If DSL-N goes to the point that it will grow as large as other distros, it is kind of losing the sense of keeping it small. And the only appealing point of using this distro is the hot insert of .dsl and .uci extensions. Anyhow, I think this is still a very appealing technology.

roberts · Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Posts: 320 Location: OC CA USA

.dsl extensions are just about obsolete. They are as nearly ram intensive as a .deb and without the package management.
Uci and unc extensions are extremely ram efficent. Since they are mounted applications there is no need for package management. A move in this direction is happening. Perhaps a smaller core with more choices of the apps in uci and unc format. This would be good for usb and compact flash. Not so much for cdrom unless a simple remaster is peformed. This is being considered and under review as a possible direction.