Because that'll basically allow me to shove @landley 's #mkroot onto one 1440kB 3,5" FDD and get @OS1337 with basically no shimming of the #Linux Kernel and #toybox.
Also it's likely the least absurd and most realistic "sci-fi tech" that is code and not completely absurd fantasy by virtue of requiring tons of #Unobtanium...
I know.
It's the part where I derivated from the #Floppinux manual which went with #gzip instead of #xz, likely because that was customary for quite some time and even used by most #busybox - based distros otherwise.
After all, rarely do #embeddedLinux systems need to conserve storage that aggressively like with #OS1337...
Granted, the minimalist version will be minimal for obvious reasons: Neither of us can defy gravity...
The actual bootloader I use most of the time myself is systemd-boot, of course, but given that comes with systemd, I doubt that'd be fitting on a floppy.
Granted my one and only concern at the current project stage is to get OS/1337 to have the essential features and tools as well as drivers needed to work as bare minimum OS that can SSH into stuff and download the rest.
@landley@SweetAIBelle@OS1337
Whether I'd add it to anything bigger is a different question but I guess it would not make sense outside of a "Server" version that fits on a 500+ MB "Bootable Businesscard DVD" so I'd say even then it's unlikely.
But that's mostly due to the nature of the project and the fact that I intend to focus on the #KISS principle (granted, OS/1337 isn't idiot-proof and single user (root) #Linux requires users to think before typing because it will rm -rf / w/o objection.
@kkarhan@landley@OS1337
It's gotten pretty hard to get away from these days, since a lot of programs require systemd, and you'll probably have to be applying patches to things to avoid it.
For something that's supposed to fit on a floppy disk, though, I think systemd would be a whole floppy disk in itself, though. In fact, seems like even OpenRC'd be too much...
One thing that is interesting, though, is that gentoo docs for systemd-boot say to either have systemd or systemd-utils installed to use it, so there may be a version of it that doesn't require systemd. Still probably better to use something else, though.
For a minimalist system that wants to be a successor to #tomsrtbt and #Floppinux there isn's anything smaller nor more efficient.
After all, I don't expect OS/1337 to be used as a "#Server" in lieu of @ubuntu / #UbuntuLTS or #Debian but instead want to use it as a clean foundation for other projects of mine in need of an #OS.
Things like the #PocketCrypto or other gadgets that may just need to run some basic #Linux and provide the necessary shims for filesystems, networking and so forth.
@SweetAIBelle@landley@OS1337 After all I got my trusty #VAIO#P11Z and it really struggles running #BunsenLabsLinux due to #Intel's feckup aka. non-willingness to support the #GMA500 properly so instead I'd rather take advantage of that 1600768px screen and just go full #TUI, since it's basically a dual 800768 screen...
I guess I'll find out in a few hours if it's gonna work out or not, but since I don't have any arguments beyond kernel and initramfs to pass on, I'm quite optimistic.
@kkarhan@nixCraft@OS1337 I went with gzip because I intend to include a gzip compressor in toybox, and just decompressors for bzip2 and xz. (So it can read but not write those other formats.)
also #gzip is the lowest common denominator of #compression on #linux, so it does make sense given that #toybox aims to provide a good yet space-efficient userland, even if that means i.e. vi instead of neovim or ne.
And given that #mkroot is a minimum viable product of a complete toybox/linux distro that is able to reproduce itself from source, it's inevitably going to be big.
A "self-hosting" distro that fits on 1440kB is very likely impossible...
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