Freesco stands for "free cisco" but it can do much more than route. It is a single 1.44MB floppy disk distro built on Linux that has a router, firewall, DHCP server, DNS, Print server, web admin interface, web server, time server, ethernet bridge, and dialup client. I'm using it on an old 486 as a print server without a hard disk, monitor, or keyboard, and it's working great. Took about a 1/2 hour to set up.
Other light distros that I have not used are Trinux, theWall, Build Your Linux Disk (not a distro, but a way to make a single floppy with the tools you need on it), single floppy mp3 players (Amacdys), Fli4l ISDN Router, and many many others. There are also some multiple floppy distros, they fit on about 5 or 6 floppies.
Bero from Red Hat is working on a bootable CD based on RH RawHide that will automatically play the movie contents of that CD via xine, I think he calls it "VCR on a CD"
For computers with more disk space (500MB), if you want a GUI, I would suggest just installing a base X install and a window manager. You don't need Gnome or KDE, just the libraries to support Gnome or KDE apps. Should be less than a GB all said and done. A text based shell script can be used to allow newbie users to launch their apps.
Also, 500MB disks are about $5 now. Those can be used with software RAID0 to make a reasonably big disk to work from.
There are many things out there. I would suggest helping out with the many existing lightweight Linux projects rather than starting new ones.
I don't buy this whole "Digital Devide" concept. Back in high school, I worked in a grocery store. There were many adult co-workers that would be considered the bottom of the working class. Some of them worked two jobs.
One day one of them brought up that he wanted to get a computer for his son, but he obviously couldn't afford anything new. I sold him a 486 class PC with monitor and modem for about $100, which was around what they cost back then, maybe a little less than what they cost. He could get on the Internet, and his kid could get computer experience.
If a man working minimum wage can get a system from the trash bin of a geek who also worked for minimum wage, for a couple days pay, then all these people whining about the "digital divide" are mostly rich people who couldn't imagine what it is like to actually have to work hard to get the things you need.
There are many other examples, some of the people I chat with on IRC are what would be considered very poor in the US sense, and have basically put together computers from with others have thrown out.
They have the exact same access to information that someone with a 2Ghz P4 does.
It may not be as fast, or as flashy, or a "rich media experience", but that stuff isn't important anyway, when you are arguing that this underclass won't have access to the same information that the upper classes would.
I don't know how it is in other countries, I don't claim to, but here in the US, the "digital divide" is a fabrication.
I know, you will say that I didn't sell him an OS license with the computer. That is true. The only thing left that can create a digital divide is software that costs too much to buy, and ways to prevent users from running unauthorized software.
So while I argue that there isn't currently a digital divide, laws like the SSSCA could easily create one by ending piracy by people who really can't afford the software.
As far as free software goes, I couldn't have put Linux on his computer. First off because this was 1995 and I didn't know what Linux was, and second off, he would want to be able to install commonly available software. I don't know what this says about free software, but when people get stuff from their friends, they want to be able to use it in their computer. Sneakernet is still big among the non-geeks. People pass around software programs, just like the 1980s C64 user groups. They want to be able to run this software.
I don't know if this message has a point, at least upon re-reading it, it seems pretty disjointed, but I hope it makes sense.
As a strong supporter of Red Hat, I think they do have some serious questions to ask themselves.
For one, they don't have a "supported" file system that scales well to the multiterabyte range. EXT is a joke performance wise when you make it that large, and reiserfs has some major bugs that aren't considered high proirity by either Red Hat or Namesys (since namesys is working on their "Next big thing".)
To me, it looks like Namesys is less interested in making a good file system anyway, they are more interested in revolutionizing the way we think about data and namespaces, which is all well and good, but we need a good scalable file system in the mean time.
XFS is an excellent scalable, journaling file system, but neither Linus or Red Hat wants to include it by default in their kernels. At least the SGI people make it very easy to add in, even providing kernel RPMs that match Red Hat stock kernels with XFS added.
This is just one thing, but it Red Hat hopes to start to capture "higher end" server markets, multiterabyte file systems are something they are going to have to work on, and soon.
The fucking moderation system is broken when we have to fucking post disclaimers by any goddamn joke that some fucking 12 year old moderator might not get, because he is too busy whacking off to read a book every now and then, or even fucking read the item that is linked to a story before pressing that moderation button.
The reason we don't see as many really funny posts anymore is because people are afraid to be witty in a subtle way because some fucking kid doesn't get the joke and thinks it's "Offtopic" or "Flamebait".
If you think M2 is a solution, think again. That is not fucking feedback, that is fucking random slaps on the wrist for moderating. How is the moderator to know which moderation he did that was unfair? It could have been any one of five different moderations.
I don't get mod points anymore, I guess I qualify as a compulsive reloader since I read slashdot daily, and post more than once a day usually.
This whole thing is bullshit. Prior restraint, through the fear of being moderated down IS censorship. Wouldn't it be censorship if the government just made your voice so quiet that no one much would hear you?
I don't buy any of this bullshit. I'm sick of humor being moderated offtopic. I'm sick of fucking snowball effects because moderators never read at -1 nested. I've found that when I have had a post modded up to 3, it is much more likely to snowball to 5. When a post gets down to 0 or -1, it has very little chance of ever seeing the light of day again, even if it was unfairly moderatod.
Anyway, fuck you moderators that don't think about what you are doing before hitting submit. If it looks like a joke, even a little, then give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you just don't get it, and it really is hilarious.
I'm done now. Posted at +2 so more people will read. Go ahead, I've got 50 more karma to burn.
Lucas is on his way down anyway. THX-1138 was his last good movie.
Star Wars was a fluke. It had ahead-of-its-time special effects, and a simple plot that appeals to idiots, while trying to remain subtle enough not to offend slightly smarter viewers.
Moderators- Strong opinions are not flamebait, even if you disagree with them.
What I don't understand is why the graphics drivers should be in X. That seems to be really bad style for a single layer to provide all that functionality.
All other hardware abstraction is done in the kernel, why isn't video card abstraction done there?
I just got in an ECS k7SEM with onboard everything, and a duron 950. All the onboard stuff is well supported in Linux. You had better have a recent Xserver to handle the onboard video though, the one that ships with Red Hat 7.2 works well (4.1.0). The sound card gets a little flaky under heavy processor load (sometimes XMMS won't be able to open the sound if it changes tracks while the processor is loaded heavily), but it sounds great.
So I got this setup working well. I ordered 6 more of them to build a MOSIX cluster with.
from www.mwave.com:
6-ECS K7SEM motherboards
6-950 Mhz Durons
1-16 port 10/100 switch
Total w/shipping: about $880
from www.sofistic.com:
6-128 meg Micron DIMMs PC133
6-el cheapo cases with 300 watt powersupplies
Total w/shipping: $337 (watch out they rape you on shipping, but their prices are so low it offsets it)
Anyway, so I am building a 6 node supercomputer for $1200. This is what a low end PC used to cost. Boy we have come a long way.
There will be some other costs, like there will need to be a hard disk somewhere for these things to boot from, but no other major costs.
MMX was 1996 or 1995 man. I know because I bought a pentium 200 non-MMX in late 1996, and it was very cheap because non-MMX chips were "old technology" by then, and 166 and 200MMX were the standard midrange in late 1996.
In early 1997 the Pentium II 233 and 266 came out. The celeron didn't exist yet.
Did you even read the case? This has nothing to do with workman's compensation insurance for injuries sustained on the job.
Also, I have had major problems with my right wrist before (from incorrect mousing I'm sure) so bad I couldn't pick up or hold objects in the air with my right hand that weighed over a pound or two, so don't preach to me.
You think the leased lines that feed your cable modem are free?
You can't pay less than $50 a month and expect T1 grade service that costs 20 times more. Now, as to why it costs 20 times more, ask the de facto telco monopolies.
Two hours ago you were bashing opportunistic lawyers in regard to the German SuSE case, and now you are whining because the supreme court said that the same type of ambulance chaser lawyer can't sue over a "disability" that is minor in comparison to real disabilities.
This decision is a victory for freedom, and limited government interference. It's also a victory for people with real disabilities.
Ah, Access. That is one catching point keeping us from depolying Linux more widely at our job.
You do bring up an interesting point though. Do you think it will be possible to automate what you have done? Can we make a distro or a package that will make Linux newbie-proof? One that will prevent a normal user from downloading untrusted binaries, and only download software from trusted sources and automatically compare MD5s, and install them in a safe way?
It's all fine and good if every newbie user has a guru like you or me to set up everything in a newbie-proof way, but there aren't enough of us to go around once Linux hits a higher market share.
Are you interested in designing a package or distro to automate what you have done? It would be a great contribution to the open source community if you did so.
heh, pretty cool. It does bring up an interesting question though.
Do we really want Linux to "succeed"? Success these days, with these levels of market penetration means that millions of unsavvy users will be using Linux. Ones that would likely run your shell script blindly. It is quite a catch 22.
There IS no such thing as security. I always believed that, but I never realized how true it really was.
The only secure system is the one you built from the ground up, hardware and software, from basic components, and even that only gets you to the point where it can become secure, not a guarantee of security.
Slashdot Mirror
There is plenty of work being done on light weight Linuxs.
Check out Freesco
Freesco stands for "free cisco" but it can do much more than route. It is a single 1.44MB floppy disk distro built on Linux that has a router, firewall, DHCP server, DNS, Print server, web admin interface, web server, time server, ethernet bridge, and dialup client. I'm using it on an old 486 as a print server without a hard disk, monitor, or keyboard, and it's working great. Took about a 1/2 hour to set up.
Other light distros that I have not used are Trinux, theWall, Build Your Linux Disk (not a distro, but a way to make a single floppy with the tools you need on it), single floppy mp3 players (Amacdys), Fli4l ISDN Router, and many many others. There are also some multiple floppy distros, they fit on about 5 or 6 floppies.
Bero from Red Hat is working on a bootable CD based on RH RawHide that will automatically play the movie contents of that CD via xine, I think he calls it "VCR on a CD"
For computers with more disk space (500MB), if you want a GUI, I would suggest just installing a base X install and a window manager. You don't need Gnome or KDE, just the libraries to support Gnome or KDE apps. Should be less than a GB all said and done. A text based shell script can be used to allow newbie users to launch their apps.
Also, 500MB disks are about $5 now. Those can be used with software RAID0 to make a reasonably big disk to work from.
There are many things out there. I would suggest helping out with the many existing lightweight Linux projects rather than starting new ones.
Have you ever tried to call MS support?
It's about as helpful as those help menus they have in Windows.
I don't buy this whole "Digital Devide" concept. Back in high school, I worked in a grocery store. There were many adult co-workers that would be considered the bottom of the working class. Some of them worked two jobs.
One day one of them brought up that he wanted to get a computer for his son, but he obviously couldn't afford anything new. I sold him a 486 class PC with monitor and modem for about $100, which was around what they cost back then, maybe a little less than what they cost. He could get on the Internet, and his kid could get computer experience.
If a man working minimum wage can get a system from the trash bin of a geek who also worked for minimum wage, for a couple days pay, then all these people whining about the "digital divide" are mostly rich people who couldn't imagine what it is like to actually have to work hard to get the things you need.
There are many other examples, some of the people I chat with on IRC are what would be considered very poor in the US sense, and have basically put together computers from with others have thrown out.
They have the exact same access to information that someone with a 2Ghz P4 does.
It may not be as fast, or as flashy, or a "rich media experience", but that stuff isn't important anyway, when you are arguing that this underclass won't have access to the same information that the upper classes would.
I don't know how it is in other countries, I don't claim to, but here in the US, the "digital divide" is a fabrication.
I know, you will say that I didn't sell him an OS license with the computer. That is true. The only thing left that can create a digital divide is software that costs too much to buy, and ways to prevent users from running unauthorized software.
So while I argue that there isn't currently a digital divide, laws like the SSSCA could easily create one by ending piracy by people who really can't afford the software.
As far as free software goes, I couldn't have put Linux on his computer. First off because this was 1995 and I didn't know what Linux was, and second off, he would want to be able to install commonly available software. I don't know what this says about free software, but when people get stuff from their friends, they want to be able to use it in their computer. Sneakernet is still big among the non-geeks. People pass around software programs, just like the 1980s C64 user groups. They want to be able to run this software.
I don't know if this message has a point, at least upon re-reading it, it seems pretty disjointed, but I hope it makes sense.
As a strong supporter of Red Hat, I think they do have some serious questions to ask themselves.
For one, they don't have a "supported" file system that scales well to the multiterabyte range. EXT is a joke performance wise when you make it that large, and reiserfs has some major bugs that aren't considered high proirity by either Red Hat or Namesys (since namesys is working on their "Next big thing".)
To me, it looks like Namesys is less interested in making a good file system anyway, they are more interested in revolutionizing the way we think about data and namespaces, which is all well and good, but we need a good scalable file system in the mean time.
XFS is an excellent scalable, journaling file system, but neither Linus or Red Hat wants to include it by default in their kernels. At least the SGI people make it very easy to add in, even providing kernel RPMs that match Red Hat stock kernels with XFS added.
This is just one thing, but it Red Hat hopes to start to capture "higher end" server markets, multiterabyte file systems are something they are going to have to work on, and soon.
Why don't you go buy an iMac.
For the rest of us that like the idea of an expandable computer, we will refuse to accept an "appliance".
OK, I need to rant.
The fucking moderation system is broken when we have to fucking post disclaimers by any goddamn joke that some fucking 12 year old moderator might not get, because he is too busy whacking off to read a book every now and then, or even fucking read the item that is linked to a story before pressing that moderation button.
The reason we don't see as many really funny posts anymore is because people are afraid to be witty in a subtle way because some fucking kid doesn't get the joke and thinks it's "Offtopic" or "Flamebait".
If you think M2 is a solution, think again. That is not fucking feedback, that is fucking random slaps on the wrist for moderating. How is the moderator to know which moderation he did that was unfair? It could have been any one of five different moderations.
I don't get mod points anymore, I guess I qualify as a compulsive reloader since I read slashdot daily, and post more than once a day usually.
This whole thing is bullshit. Prior restraint, through the fear of being moderated down IS censorship. Wouldn't it be censorship if the government just made your voice so quiet that no one much would hear you?
I don't buy any of this bullshit. I'm sick of humor being moderated offtopic. I'm sick of fucking snowball effects because moderators never read at -1 nested. I've found that when I have had a post modded up to 3, it is much more likely to snowball to 5. When a post gets down to 0 or -1, it has very little chance of ever seeing the light of day again, even if it was unfairly moderatod.
Anyway, fuck you moderators that don't think about what you are doing before hitting submit. If it looks like a joke, even a little, then give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you just don't get it, and it really is hilarious.
I'm done now. Posted at +2 so more people will read. Go ahead, I've got 50 more karma to burn.
Lucas is on his way down anyway. THX-1138 was his last good movie.
Star Wars was a fluke. It had ahead-of-its-time special effects, and a simple plot that appeals to idiots, while trying to remain subtle enough not to offend slightly smarter viewers.
Moderators- Strong opinions are not flamebait, even if you disagree with them.
What I don't understand is why the graphics drivers should be in X. That seems to be really bad style for a single layer to provide all that functionality.
All other hardware abstraction is done in the kernel, why isn't video card abstraction done there?
I'm thinking the OEMs had the chips before the "official" release.
Speaking of SiS and ECS....
I just got in an ECS k7SEM with onboard everything, and a duron 950. All the onboard stuff is well supported in Linux. You had better have a recent Xserver to handle the onboard video though, the one that ships with Red Hat 7.2 works well (4.1.0). The sound card gets a little flaky under heavy processor load (sometimes XMMS won't be able to open the sound if it changes tracks while the processor is loaded heavily), but it sounds great.
So I got this setup working well. I ordered 6 more of them to build a MOSIX cluster with.
from www.mwave.com:
6-ECS K7SEM motherboards
6-950 Mhz Durons
1-16 port 10/100 switch
Total w/shipping: about $880
from www.sofistic.com:
6-128 meg Micron DIMMs PC133
6-el cheapo cases with 300 watt powersupplies
Total w/shipping: $337 (watch out they rape you on shipping, but their prices are so low it offsets it)
Anyway, so I am building a 6 node supercomputer for $1200. This is what a low end PC used to cost. Boy we have come a long way.
There will be some other costs, like there will need to be a hard disk somewhere for these things to boot from, but no other major costs.
MMX was 1996 or 1995 man. I know because I bought a pentium 200 non-MMX in late 1996, and it was very cheap because non-MMX chips were "old technology" by then, and 166 and 200MMX were the standard midrange in late 1996.
In early 1997 the Pentium II 233 and 266 came out. The celeron didn't exist yet.
Everyone knows you need 80mm CDs to save the world!
Hehe cool, thanks for the info.
Also the fact that he is unemployed and looking for work is probably a big tip off that he has no lawyers.
Did you even read the case? This has nothing to do with workman's compensation insurance for injuries sustained on the job.
Also, I have had major problems with my right wrist before (from incorrect mousing I'm sure) so bad I couldn't pick up or hold objects in the air with my right hand that weighed over a pound or two, so don't preach to me.
You think the leased lines that feed your cable modem are free?
You can't pay less than $50 a month and expect T1 grade service that costs 20 times more. Now, as to why it costs 20 times more, ask the de facto telco monopolies.
Hehe, It's funny, my former coworker left a Linuxgruven bumper stuck on the wall in my office. It's still up there.
I always just thought it was a joke like those Farfrompukin T-Shirts that were available a while back. Really!
Write only memory, wow.
Two hours ago you were bashing opportunistic lawyers in regard to the German SuSE case, and now you are whining because the supreme court said that the same type of ambulance chaser lawyer can't sue over a "disability" that is minor in comparison to real disabilities.
This decision is a victory for freedom, and limited government interference. It's also a victory for people with real disabilities.
u r lame, bcuzz of ppl like u english will d-generate in2 a mess of bulls**t a0l speak.
Get it?
Ah, Access. That is one catching point keeping us from depolying Linux more widely at our job.
You do bring up an interesting point though. Do you think it will be possible to automate what you have done? Can we make a distro or a package that will make Linux newbie-proof? One that will prevent a normal user from downloading untrusted binaries, and only download software from trusted sources and automatically compare MD5s, and install them in a safe way?
It's all fine and good if every newbie user has a guru like you or me to set up everything in a newbie-proof way, but there aren't enough of us to go around once Linux hits a higher market share.
Are you interested in designing a package or distro to automate what you have done? It would be a great contribution to the open source community if you did so.
heh, pretty cool. It does bring up an interesting question though.
Do we really want Linux to "succeed"? Success these days, with these levels of market penetration means that millions of unsavvy users will be using Linux. Ones that would likely run your shell script blindly. It is quite a catch 22.
Are you serious? You would have to pay $40,000 to be able to drive without insurance?
Well, also, social security and medicaid/care isn't voluntary, but those are just barely insurance programs, more like wealth transfer.
As a side note, in Virginia, you have the option of paying a $400 uninsured motorist fee and not getting any insurance on your car at all.
Man. :)
There IS no such thing as security. I always believed that, but I never realized how true it really was.
The only secure system is the one you built from the ground up, hardware and software, from basic components, and even that only gets you to the point where it can become secure, not a guarantee of security.