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Topic: Any plans for...?

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adssse

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Posts: 505
Joined: Mar. 2005

Posted: Sep. 02 2005,04:20

I have been doing some research on apm/acpi and have received different details about the support for each between kernel 2.4 and 2.6. I believe I read that 2.4 does not support acpi without an additional patch or recompiling, is this correct? If someone could give me the lowdown on this I would appreciate it.

stoneguy

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Posts: 38
Joined: Jan. 2004

Posted: Sep. 04 2005,22:11

Time for me to jump in here.

The biggie in 2.6 as far as I'm concerned is UDFS, aka CDRWs as rewritable media.

There were some attempts to get that feature into 2.4 kernels, but after numerous attempts, the writers concluded it couldn't be done. The 2.6 kernel made required infrastructure changes which made UDFS support a normal kernel option.

The 64MB P166 I'm writing this on right now has acquired a CDRW, a DVD reader, and more HD over the years, but it can't get any more RAM or CPU. Booting Win98, I use it to accumulate stuff onto CDRWs. But under Win98, it crashes every few hours even if sitting unused. Under DSL, it's rock-stable.

I gotta toss in an opinion here. I realize it's a point of pride to keep DSL under 50MB, but really, guys, WHY? I don't want to see DSL go the way of Peanut/aLinux. But those pocket CDs seem to be getting harder and harder to find. (I can't find them in Toronto anywhere and order them by mail from across the country.) The smallness attribute of DSL I value is its ability to run in 64MB RAM. Losing that would mean losing interest in DSL (which I migrated to when Vector started requiring 128MB RAM), and consigning this machine to the scrap heap.

I realize there'll be a performance hit with 2.6. But I'd pay that to gain an ability I can't have with 2.4. And as for the ability to run on older hdw, well, this system IS older hdw (8yr-old ASUS MB), and some other distros load 2.6 kernels on it (in runlevel 2 anyway) no problem. Of course, the best solution would be to offer both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, but that's a lot of work to maintain.

jshaw

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Posts: 42
Joined: July 2004

Posted: Sep. 05 2005,02:01

It seems to me that maybe the point has been lost on the newer-everything crowd.

I've been using computers since '90 and have owned a grand total of 5 computers, 1 of which was a loner so that I could run linux without intruding on my wife's Windows Box (DSL, BTW, screemed on that 300MHZ heap of $*&#) and the one I'm using now is only about 8 months old. Suffice it to say that I've always had to figure out how to run as much as possible with as little as possible and I've spent countless hours trimming DOS 4.01 thru Win9x down to as little as possible just so I could run just 1 more app at a time.

I've never been on the cutting edge of any hardware technology. Buying hardware that's already a generation behind, and then using it for 3 or 4 years will really teach a person to appreciate small and fast software.

That's where DSL comes in. It's made to take advantage of the older hardware, and keep it useable for years to come. I'm fully satisfied knowing that my 1.5 GHZ AMD will still be sitting on my desk 4 years from now still bobbing along happily with DSL (or God forbid something else, should DSL fall by the wayside).

DSL isn't for the latest is greatest set, it's for those of use who have to make our purchases last and would like to stay happily computing for years to come using our $400 Newegg "dream machine."

--------------
Dell Optiplex GX100 - Painted Flat Black
Celeron 566
256 MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 4400MX - Onboard graphics are crap
Old Sound Card
ProView 19" Widescreen 1440x900 native resolution
(thanks XFree86 and nvidia2 extensions)
DSL 4.2.5 ROCKS on this machine!

mikshaw

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Posts: 4856
Joined: July 2004

Posted: Sep. 05 2005,02:30

Added to that, there are bigillions of Linux distros available that work fine for mediocre-to-blazing machines, which also support the latest and greatest hardware. If a person wants that, they have many other options. DSL is one of only a few that continues to support not only old hardware but also people who are still limited to dialup. NOTE: there are still many places in this world where broadband is not available unless you want to pay extra for the hardware and service of a satellite connection. Downloading even a 200-400mb distro (of which there are very few) is a lengthy task on dialup.

--------------
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html

SaidinUnleashed Offline

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Posts: 1428
Joined: Mar. 2004

Posted: Sep. 05 2005,04:16

Quote (stoneguy @ Sep. 04 2005,17:11)

I realize it's a point of pride to keep DSL under 50MB, but really, guys, WHY?

When we stop adhering to the rules and policies that we have set for DSL, there will no longer BE a DSL. It will become just another mediocre midsized distro.

Look at the distros that started out as mini OSes. Peanut, Puppy, Vector, Slax - the list goes on. What has happened to all of them? THey have succumbed to the tepmtation of bloat. "The jump from 50 to 64mb isn't that big. We should do it!" The result? A distro now filled with gtk2 apps and a heavier WM, unable to run on the lightwieght computers that it was prized on, and not flexible or extensible enough for midrange to high-end boxes. It becomes a victim of mediocrity. There are hundreds of ways to get 200mb of linux on a computer. With many of them, you not only get an operating system, but full package management, dependency checking, updates, etc. Why would I use a something like Slax/Puppy/Peanut when I can use a normal distro with more features?

DSL's appeal is that it can be run on ANYTHING. I run it on a 486DX/66 and it works like a dream. Even the debian-installer CD has a hard time booting on that thing, especially until it sees the swap. Puppy? You'd have to be mad to try to boot it on a 486.

Don't have a bottom of the line box? Load DSL to ram and see how fast your computer can go! It will SHOCK you how much a hard disk is a bottleneck. 50mb will fit into ram on probably 75% of the world's computers. 200mb? You're down to under 20%. Much of the world still runs on pentium-class computers with around 96 - 128mb of ram. Even these "dinosaurs" can be much faster than a midrange box with a normal distro.

And If you have a high-end box, you can have your entire OS in ram, as well as every application you use. It's something you have to experience to believe.

-J.P.

--------------
They say if you play a Microsoft CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing, cause if you play it forwards, it installs Windows.

Unleash the power of the TILDE~~~

25 replies since July 21 2005,16:42

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Damn Small Linux Board » Damn Small Linux » DSL Ideas and Suggestions » Any plans for...?