dsl roadmap?

Forum: water cooler
Topic: dsl roadmap?
started by: nickelplated

Posted by nickelplated on Aug. 22 2005,15:10

Just wondering what kind of plans you guys have for the future of dsl, what do I have to look forward to

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 22 2005,19:16

BioDSL (or Damn Subatomic Linux)
A script which will install a Frugal DSL system on an organic chip embedded just below the skin and networked to your neural system. You can set it to boot as you leave REM sleep, or have it running 24/7 (the default).
The current devel version has some bugs to squash...it's much easier to accidentally think "rm -rf /" than it is to acidentally type it.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Aug. 22 2005,19:35

Kelvin-DSL

A mutant form of DSL that 'cools' your cpu the more you run it.

As you approach 100% CPU usage, the cpu begins to drop in
temperature rapidly, therefore lowering the thermal stress,
and improving it's overclockability..

At 150% - 250% cpu usage, the temperature begins to reach
a critical mass of -250F , it's 'normal' range of operation.

At 550% cpu usage, the temps can reach -400F.

Temperatures dropping below about -425F cause a
slowdown of the circuit and electron paths, and
the cpu begins to gradually slow its performance.

Performance varies widely on several factors..

But it's quite shocking to see an old 233MMX cpu
running like it's clocked at 1.25GHz, and the ice forming
around the fan vents..

<more secrets await.. >

73
ke4nt

Posted by MysticButton on Aug. 23 2005,01:35

Wow, as long as we're dreaming, how about a version of DSL that magically adds back in all of the things that have been stripped away to make it less than 50 Megs? Yeh, that's it: you can finally run that simple thing you want to. So you take out the CD, shake it really hard (to summon the Gods of cosmic alignment) and the missing libraries are back! Shake it again and there's man so you can read man pages! One more shake and everything you need to do what you want is there. Do you dare shake again to bring it almost up to Debian?

I have my own prayer wheel of CDs that still don't suit my purpose. Small but mighty might be a good place to start.

Where don't you want to go today?

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 23 2005,02:09

I have a notion that shaking the CD would bring unpredictable results, which is why the myDSL system is there in order to add a decent amount of additional software.
I think a good step forward would be all applications in a totally modular system....plug in an application you want to use and unplug it when you're done with it. Since file size will eventually not be an issue, all dependencies for each program are included with that program and separated from those of every other program. UCI is a step toward this, but i think it would be ideal if DSL could be mainly hardware detection plus GNU utils and some essential scripts...everything else would be mounted.

Posted by cbagger01 on Aug. 23 2005,16:04

In theory, this would be nice. But in practice there would be too much overhead with all of the cloop devices that were mounted.

Since I am happy with the bloat-level (or lack thereof) of the base livecd, I am OK with the status-quo and use UCI for some of the additions.

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 23 2005,19:31

I see what you're saying, but i was thinking of the not-so-near future. Eventually there will be no need to support 200mhz machines because there will come a time when they no longer exist. Cloop devices won't necessarily be the best compressed filesystem a few years down the road either. Then again, GNU/Linux might not be the best operating system available in 10 years, either =o)

Posted by friedgold on Aug. 26 2005,01:48

Quote (mikshaw @ Aug. 22 2005,22:09)

What your describing sounds a awful lot like < klik > (used in Knoppix). It uses cramfs compressed .cmg application packages. To run an application you double click on the .cmg file and it mounts the package and runs the application. When you've finished running the application the .cmg file is unmounted. Any libs not present in the base system are included in the .cmg application packages so there should be no dependency issues (although it's also very inefficient as you might have copies of the same library present in a number of application packages when on a normal Linux system just one copy would suffice).

Posted by roberts on Aug. 26 2005,14:18

klik came after our ci and uci modules. In fact when it was announced on knoppix.net there were posts saying so. klik is to kde what uci is to our fluxbox system. We had have mount and unmount apps for a very long time. DSL will remain a small set of useful desktops apps. There are no plans to strip it down to the metal. The uci system, just as the base.iso will continue to improve and grow in featues. Remember, we don't have tens, hundreds, or thousands of developers, nor do we have millions of dollars behind this project. Yet, with our nearly monthly releases, I believe we offer unique and interesting features. We are not just a collection of binaries. You will have much to look forward too.

Posted by nickelplated on Aug. 26 2005,16:16

Sweet.

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Aug. 26 2005,17:37

Quote (roberts @ Aug. 26 2005,09:18)

klik came after our ci and uci modules.

*cough*zomg ripoff*cough*

Posted by cbagger01 on Aug. 26 2005,20:54

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Besides, KNOPPIX (a GREAT project in it's own right) eventually moved away from the "klik" system and into the writable filesystem approach, which by the way was also a concept first implemented by DSL. Now if they could only get UNIONFS to work as well as the simple symlink DSL approach, it would be a win-win

The thing that annoys me the most about the buggy (and additional resource using) UNIONFS hooks inside KNOPPIX is that I can't find a way to TURN THE DARN THING OFF. A "nounionfs" cheatcode would be nice

But I digress...

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Aug. 27 2005,03:57

Agreed.

Unionfs is what drove me away from using Knoppix at all. It makes the system so much slower and buggier that I can't stand it.

-J.P.

Posted by cbagger01 on Aug. 28 2005,03:22

And it appears that they have repeated their error with KNOPPIX 4.0

Unionfs is still there, and it is still broken. (kernel oops)

Hopefully they came up with a "nounionfs" cheatcode by now :laugh:

I like to use newer knoppix on some of the newer computers with SATA hard drives for image backups like the Dell GX280s.

By the way, Dell is getting REALLY cheap with their motherboards. The 280 motherboard comes with a primary and secondary SATA controller, but since chassis expansion space is limited they chose not to support the secondary controller. All they did was eliminate the $0.02 plastic socket from the side of the motherboard. The solder points are still there, but no socket. VERY annoying when you are trying to clone SATA hard drives.

Older knoppix and DSL do not recogize the controller. Even the 2.4.27 kernel in knoppix 3.7?

Knoppix could use an alternative 2.4.x kernel, it could use a "nounionfs" and it should also bring back captive-ntfs

I really liked the knoppix 3.4 version that was used as the base for DSL 0.8+

Oh well.

Posted by gurru on Oct. 25 2005,22:00

Please hear me out guys.

Knoppix's implimentation of unionfs does seem to be buggy and a resource hog. However, Slax's use of Unionfs is very good.
I think it might have something to do with the 2.6 kernel in Slax.

I've been playing around with Unionfs on Gentoo and I'm quite impressed with it's abilities.

I would really like to see this in DSL. Maybe after we move to the 2.6 kernel.

With the great hardware detection...
the already small size and speed of DSL
add unionfs (for easy changes in the future)

DSL would still run on my old machine and be simple to modify when we need to.

Straight Awesome! Guys!
I say "Lets make it work"

This is really going to save dev time in the long run.
Plus the user will not have to backup and restore all the time.

Don't rule out unionfs because of one very bad implimentation.
I think this would actually be in DSL's best interest.

Ok i'll get off my soap box now.