Hello Franz,<br><br>I agree with you on this, mostly because I see the main fedora becoming less sustainable on resource constrained machines the further it develops. I have the intention of trying to extend floppy-based slinky to fedora 7 myself, but I've no illusions - it is sure to be a difficult task. I've been away from fedora for a couple release cycles, so I certainly have a lot of catching up to do. At the very least, I would like to be able to figure out how to perform a minimal installation of fedora 7 on my old P-III system which cannot boot from CD. For me, this might just be a question of booting the network-installer from an image on hard disk, or creating a bootable floppy that can launch the installation environment on the CD.
<br><br>Other questions/thoughts:<br><br><ol><li>Is a "slimmed-down" version of fedora 7 itself still possible or desirable? <br></li><li>Other uses for slinky, such as setting up a VM-hosted OS, have been proposed. Given that slinky now sets up a very minimal system for which the user must still install applications, maybe slinky becomes an installer and/or script(s) for retrieving packages from the repositories to configure a basic end user (or server/appliance/whatever) system?
<br></li><li>Maybe slinky should evolve towards using ISO, USB or other media as its delivery platform? Should we follow the trend of dropping floppy support?</li></ol><br>It is interesting that fedora 7 is the basis of the OS for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Obviously, people are developing and using fedora-based GNU/Linux for resource constrained systems. Probably not applicable to RULE's goals of selecting appropriate packages from an existing distribution, though, as that qualifies as a custom distro (although the CPU is considered x86 compatible:
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification#Core_electronics">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification#Core_electronics</a>).<br><br>It does seem to me that there is a divergence, and that ultimately one tool cannot span both:
<br><ol><li>A fedora-based, slinky-descended installer/configurator for P5+ systems (<a href="http://fedoraproject.org/release-notes/RELEASE-NOTES-en_US/sn-ArchSpecific.html">http://fedoraproject.org/release-notes/RELEASE-NOTES-en_US/sn-ArchSpecific.html
</a>)</li><li>An installer for a less-than P5+ system that is resource constrained due to lack of bootable CD, low RAM, restricted HDD storage, etc.</li></ol>The first would be targeted towards newer, if possibly resource-constrained hardware/environments. It might drop floppy support.
<br><br>The second would truly be for "older computers." It would still support floppy boot. This second one would need a kernel modified for older CPUs.<br><br>Which brings to mind another question:<br><br><div style="margin-left: 40px;">
Is it just the kernel that requires a P5+ or has the rest of the system been compiled for Pentium class or better CPUs?<br></div><br>Regards,<br>CDR<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/26/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">
Franz Zahaurek</b> <<a href="mailto:fzk@fzk.at">fzk@fzk.at</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Hi all,<br>
<br>let me add the following thoughts to the recent discussion about RULE/SLINKY on<br>the list.<br><br>I think the RULE-idea is still valid. Basicly it is about sustainability. Don't<br>drop your hardware only because new software implies to do so. But nevertheless
<br>every thing has its lifecycle be that for economical, ecolocical or tecnical reasons.<br>And that is specially true for computers! Don't expect slinky to boost your old<br>PC. But with the right application you could still use it (in principle).
<br><br>I developed slinky for about 3 years from FC2 to FC5 with a central idea in<br>mind: keep it small, and use any recource at best. I dropped the standalone rpm<br>(and with it the second install floppy) and used busyboxs small rpm to install
<br>FEDORAs full featured rpm; added national keybindings and the character dialog<br>interface. But the installation changed from RULE to BUFE (Boot Up2date Fedora<br>Everywhere). Only the first Fedora CD is neccesary and applications MUST be
<br>installed later by the user. (But there is no need to handle package lists for<br>some application-profiles) The main effort to follow from FC2 to FC5 was to<br>change versions of the RPMs in the packagelists.<br><br>
But I think things have changed too much since slinky started. Floppies are not<br>even available any more - we all use USB-sticks now with much greater capacity.<br><br>I'am afraid slinky as it is now, has reached the end of its lifecycle.
<br><br>What do you think about it?<br><br>- Franz<br>--<br>Franz Zahaurek <a href="mailto:fzk@fzk.at">fzk@fzk.at</a><br>Gymnasiumstr. 26/7 <a href="http://www.fzk.at">http://www.fzk.at
</a><br>1180 Wien<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Rule-list mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Rule-list@lists.hellug.gr">Rule-list@lists.hellug.gr</a><br><a href="http://lists.hellug.gr/mailman/listinfo/rule-list">
http://lists.hellug.gr/mailman/listinfo/rule-list</a><br></blockquote></div><br>