>It can run on a quarter of a GB memory. Its installation image is only fifty megabytes, full desktop included,
Oh, how the times change. I remember when "lightweight Linux" meant it came on a single 1.4MB floppy disk and could run on 4MB of RAM. Yes, including desktop, though that may have required a second floppy and 8MB.
These days, locale alone takes up 100MB of disk space, in case of Debian. Even without it, it's still difficult to go below 50MB, IIRC. Welp, even USB thumb drivers are much larger than that, so it won't be a problem, practically, but it's kinda puzzling to see how things can get this big.
> but it's kinda puzzling to see how things can get this big.
the industry has been on moore's drug for too long and reckless software develpement practices really take their toll since the performance plateau came in effect around 2015.
I use to enjoy the blog of Virtual Dub, the author made this tiny video editor and talked frequently how things could be optimized without library dependencies. https://www.virtualdub.org/blog2/archive.html
Adding a huge library dependency to only use a function or two from there feels like a common practice these days, unfortunately. More often than not, you can copy the interesting part into your project as sources, or even better, reimplement it in a way that's more specific, and thus more optimal, for your problem.
My first Linux install was in 1995 or 1996 with kernel 1.2.x and a functional desktop required way much more than a single floppy disk. IIRC, the kernel alone (with initrd) was taking one disk. I'm curious when "lightweight Linux" fit on one or two disks.
ASMUTILS were specifically made for this. All your typical unix command line applications implemented in x86 assembly. You can still download the floppy image here: http://asm.sourceforge.net/asmutils.html
My memory is a bit hazy, but it was actually later than that, 1999 or 2000, playing around with an old Toshiba laptop. It was a specialized distro of course, there were (and still are) a few of those. Maybe tomsrtbt. And a the desktop was functional inasmuch you could have multiple xterm windows and little else.
Heh, well, not sure about this, as it was the famous QNX 4.x floppy which was groundbreaking (the main dev passed away around the time of the release). I remember running a Linux firewall on a floppy, stateless (read-only). Nowadays, we wouldn't accept such, as it would not be able to update the software easily. I mean, one can run a firewall and virtual switch in a VM these days. With snapshot support. And then there's something like Nix which does take up a lot of space, same with ZFS dedup. While these features all use a lot of disk space, they give a lot of advantages. Which, logically, come with a price.
I think you’re rather over exaggerating. For a few emergency boot disk or very low spec, like LOAF or uLinux, sure. But even late 90s, for anything actually practical, 50mb would’ve been quite the achievement. DragonLinux was my go to “lightweight” and it was around 200mb. 50mb in the early 00s only got you the net install for Debian, and Knoppix was a whole CD.
But this is 2021. You need to do some serious pruning just to get GCC in under 1gb. 50 mb is a fucking miracle.
technical terminology has been pretty largely devalued across the board. do you remember what 'implement an SMTP server' used to mean? so fine, words change, but now there is no way to refer to actually writing the source for a compliant MTA.
distributed systems developer? senior software engineer? bare metal?
looks like an interesting project. Is anyone using this in 2021? I noticed the last blog post from the official site was in 2017. The forum is also very quiet.
What would prevent me from touching this however: ISO images are hosted via plain HTTP[1] and the only way to verify it is an md5sum that I have to fetch from the same domain. not only is there no transport integrity but I have no way of knowing if the binaries hosted on that server can be traced to a build upstream? Maybe I have to dig around their hg to find out or I'm missing something? Who built these images and where would be good to know before I would consider loading any of this on my hardware.
I could not make sense of the info in this page[2] linked to from [download] warning about spectre/meltdown. Also the suggested mitigation techniques were odd to say the least.
The project had a total of 7 contributors since 2012. Would be nice if this got more eyeballs and some serious refactoring on how they do security and build automation since this is a key element in a distribution (imho).
About 10 years ago, I used VMs of Slittaz when making virtual networks for school and needed multiple hosts. It was a great option for that. I will likely have to do something similar soon and Slittaz seems like a good candidate.
Alpine might be a better choice for you, its intended use is in VMs and containers, it's actively maintained and supported, and it gets better with each release.
Nice setup, thanks! Just to note, the network-manager-* packages are now networkmanager-*, and the xf86-input-keyboard and xf86-input-mouse are no longer available (nor needed, I believe). Also, I see packages in your list for running under virtualization, so I'm assuming you aren't running your desktop on bare metal? I actually did a quick install using your guide on a spare machine just now, and it worked great apart from the above changes. Very nimble and usable on an old HP Stream Mini desktop with 4GB of RAM.
Thanks so much for the feedback, and I'm glad it is working for you. Yes, I was using this in VirtualBox. I now use it on bare metal, so I may show how that differentiation is made. I made the updates to the blog post.
Here's a few other distros that i enjoy and that are on the lighter side, even though they're larger than Slitaz.
Personally, i'd look at the usability of a distro first and then the file size, which seems to work out nicely for me with the below distros, since their desktops (e.g. LXDE/LXQt, XFCE) are fully featured and there's a sufficient amount of software for them to be daily drivers.
Thanks for catching that! It's pretty disheartening to see people doing something like creating a shady site that pretends to be the real thing.
Thankfully uBlock at least warned me about something being off, though having some sort of a reputation plugin for webpages would be nice too, with more details about what exactly is going on.
Glad to see Slitaz still alive and going well. I first used it probably in 2010, and I really liked how different it was from other distros at the time.
I was kinda surprised to see that the development repos are hosted using mercurial (https://hg.slitaz.org/). I don't remember seeing other Linux distros using mercurial instead of git for development. The repos are apparently mirrored on GitHub but I don't see a lot of development happening there.
That looks like an error from your browser, rather than a broken link.
Their download server supports HTTPS for what it's worth, you just need a decent browser that will either try HTTPS automatically or allow you to download files over HTTP.
I ran it from USB on a very old Acer 2310 with a Celeron (old series, not new) M processor and 256MB RAM. Worked fine. I didn't try latest Firefox on it but the included web browser was alright. Terminal and vi worked.
The thing with Faenza was the same reason it became popular - the uniformity of their outer shapes. Some people didn't liked them because it was hard for them to tell icons apart.
I once worked with the KDE VDG on what they would do about the default icon theme for their (then future) Frameworks 5.0 release, and suggested several icons going in that trend (which was originated in the rage of those days of skeumorphism on smartphones and Apple icons for iOS) - but was told that - and that they needed to use the original icons for several apps, like Firefox, so no custom versions would be appropriate - no "adaptation" to outer squared shapes were possible
While I love the concept, the fact the package manager is different from the common ones, and some of the packages they do have are outdated, means attempting to use this for my use case will probably result in a painful experience.
I remember when the internet was smaller (20 years ago?) some people would have a comparison of different package managers for linux distros where they would dive in to examples and use. Anyway, this is a high level of package currency : https://repology.org/
The last distros I've used that didn't really have their own package managers were Slackware (it is just a tarball) and PuppyLinux (adopted from slackware or debian).
As long as the distro has enough manpower to ensure that outdated packages are not a security risk. I run Debian stable because I don't mind old versions, and I trust the Debian people to keep my system reasonably secure.
May I suggest joining Ubuntu Advantage and getting ESM? That's free for personal use and you'd get support until April 2024. I'm keeping a 16.04 box like that simply because I'm too lazy to redo stuff that works and with that I don't have to worry about it until 2026.
Agreed, but the article says some do not: "However, available applications as mentioned are limited for now, in number and in version and in ability to run, as there are many outdated applications will not work after installation"
It's a shame you can't see much detail on the screenshots about how they're using a web browser for settings and installation. Also why are the screenshots so small as well? Strange choice
these days OSes are the base for a browser for daily use for most people, browser is essential, what browser is used? chrome alone is heavier than the whole OS image.
Note that the reason for most webkit2gtk Browsers to switch to electron is that webkit2gtk isn't receiving security updates anymore. It's basically unmaintained, apple-style.
Just wondering, why is that important that the OS is from Switzerland? Does it help that much in their marketing or does it matter?
Also, from the practical proint of view, what does it matter for the opensource project to be originating from specific country? Don't they accept PRs from outside Switzerland or what?
At least here (Italy) the attibute "svizzero" (swiss), used in sentences like "it works like a swiss clock" or "like a swiss railway" or even only as "swiss precision" or "swiss timetable" is a synonim of punctuality, exactness, reliability (and also means, but this is digressing, somewhat boring).
I believe you saw an implication that 'Swiss' shouldn't be there. Then you reacted to that implication, by saying they can put 'Swiss' there if they feel like it. Is my understanding correct?
The problem is, while you responded to that implication, you skipped responding to the actual question. The question was what motivated putting 'Swiss' there. It might be something as simple as 'national pride', or it might be more complicated. And personally I think it's at least reasonable to ask.
I understand a desire to address an implication you dislike, to call it bad rhetoric or whatever, and to say the actual question isn't worth touching. But, like, the HN guidelines specifically say you should respond to the strongest interpretation of the post you're replying to. The strongest interpretation is that "Why is that important that the OS is from Switzerland?" is a real question, and the answer could actually matter. If you completely ignore the text of a valid question in an attempt to address the subtext, you're not "right on mark".
Yeah! I remember PeppermintOS, another lightweight distro, was developed locally, for the most part. I used that for a long time. Apparently it's still a thing but I think the developers are now in many different places. I'll have to check it out again now that Mint has broken for me.
Now I’m wondering why you asked that question without also offering up where you are posting from, for greater context and information in communication :^)
Oh, how the times change. I remember when "lightweight Linux" meant it came on a single 1.4MB floppy disk and could run on 4MB of RAM. Yes, including desktop, though that may have required a second floppy and 8MB.