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Wrong choice of market share target
#1
IMHO - DSL as-is .. is just another in a already fully-fluxed arena (Fatdog, Puppy ...etc.).

Better ... and simpler, would be a 'small' similar to my own. A vmlinuz with integral intiramfs, 25MB filesize, where all my modules/firmware are built into the kernel and the initramfs contains just enough to boot to a vesa/simpledrm framebuffer (very generic), wifi/eth net connect, alsa/sndio and has ssh/vnc. Very portable, many devices support vesa and can boot provided secure-boot is disabled, boots in a second, ssh/vnc connects in a couple more seconds, and drops you into a full gui desktop that may be running chrome to view youtubes ... whatever, and has the appearance of running at the net/cpu speed of whatever you vnc into.

Bloat the kernel, to include a broader range of device support, and the size increase is still relatively small. Perhaps a 50MB vmlinuz filesize (assuming xz compressed).

Booting in a second, dropping into a full gui desktop (libre office, chrome ...etc.) in a couple of seconds more - resuming where you left off, with a look-n-feel of running at whatever the server runs at ... can be impressive, and usable enough to retain users - I use mine as my primary choice of boot. As my ISP caps upload speeds to 20Mbs (2.5MB/sec) I've set a default of using 12 frames per second, 16 bit color depth ... and that still looks/feels fine, whilst typically seeing 2MB/sec (16Mbs) data rates when viewing a youtube. I also have a vncserver on my phone (termux (not rooted) based). The home server is a i5/nvidia/ethernet box, so for instance when out and about and vnc'd into that a online-internet-speed-test will appear to provide a 140Mbs download rate, as will high resolution videos/youtubes appear to play OK (but in reality where many frames are actually skipped/dropped).

And that transfers the overhead of having to maintain repos, as that's then the servers responsibility. I often have multiple vnc's running concurrently, windows, mac, linux, bsd, android ... whatever, according to whichever program/app is appropriate at the time.

As-is I see DSL being just a another novelty, try once for fun, maybe then just gathers dust or is removed. Missing out on a better market-share at the lower terminal-server style end that DSL could have thrown itself into. But fair enough, DSL could still be setup/used in a similar vein to my framebuffer boot, load Xvnc for a X session, run vncviewer in that to connect to a remote vncserver, and framebuffer vnc into that local Xvnc session (were all elements are set to 16 bit color depth, and the servers are set to 12 frames/second).

JMHO. Not intended as a criticism, congratulations to the DSL team for their hard work/efforts in reviving DSL.
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#2
Interesting stuff for sure. Read your topic over at another place about this and using the all inclusive kernel and framebuffer. I also use VNC quite a bit for other types of distros.

Can you share your kernel configuration DOT file? Like to look at that. I will be going over the instructions over at the other place to see if I can get a VNC version up of a similar system you are working with.
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#3
First time I've used badwolf, impressed. Using it to post this.

I installed DSL frugally i.e. using grub4dos to boot it, extracted the initrd.gz, vmlinuz and /antiX/linuxfs from the ISO to my sda1

Created a grub4dos menu.lst entry for that

title DSL
kernel /vmlinuz from=hd bdev=sda1 sq=/antiX/linuxfs kbd=gb dpi=144
initrd /initrd.gz

the sq= ... isn't required as /antiX/linuxfs is the default anyway.

A bit slow to load, I assume the linuxfs is using a high/slow xz compression. I see that the kernel was built with lz4 compression support so I'm just extracting the linuxfs sfs as I post this and will recreate it using lz4 -Xhc compression. That combined with using jwm for the desktop should make it a lot snappier/quicker (lz4 combined with a SDD - and that runs/extracts at near ram bus speed).
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#4
Food for thought, thank you.
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#5
(02-04-2024, 07:50 PM)John Wrote: Food for thought, thank you.

Just as a base comparison, Fatdog also uses high xz compression of the main sfs, 450MB compared to DSL's 666MB
Fadog base has seamonkey, libreoffice, vlc ... and a bunch of the other common tools, geany, leafpad, galculator, osmo, notecase ...etc. And that's just one alternative ... of hundreds. DSL used to compete in a very narrow arena, as-is I suspect it wont go as far and will take more effort than if instead it were simplified to focus on the useful small distro/boot end.

But John you've done a great job and the fluxbox desktop looks great. I personally prefer jwm however, familiarity, so when switched to that it looks - much the same as many other alternatives, nothing particularly distinctive or capturing.

Sorry to down-tread, I honestly mean good-intent.
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