Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, David Lane wrote:

>
>  First,thanks for all the ideas,but I'm kind of doubting BL3 will run on an
> 40mghtz 386 w/8MB ram,which is what I'm running the BL1 on.Coming from a DOS

Not correct.  BL3 is actually even more system resource-friendly than BL1:
it's sort of a "step backwards" (in terms of resource useage: at the same
time it introduces some interesting new concepts and uses some more
up-to-date Linux features).  I'm sure it will run on your 386, and I'm
pretty sure Steven would recommend it over BL1 for that machine as well.
I've run it on a 386sx 25 with 4MB RAM - though GUI mode is not really
very useable.  Command line stuff works fine.  I'd say your machine will
work well for this.

> back-round I was trying to learn from the ground up something new and having
> something not be easy is fine.

Steven's plan is to have BL3 be a Linux learning tool.  He's commented
that it may provide a better learning environment that previous BL's.

>    My plan,such as it is,is to use a higher end machine for the BL2 and BL3
> part of my learning process.

You can use BL3 on pretty much whatever machine you want, but it's geared
to machines with as little as 4MB RAM and 386sx processors.  For gui mode,
such old, low RAM machines are really limited to serving as xterminals,
but in command line mode they can function independently.  With 8MB RAM,
however, it's even feasible to use it as a standalone machine in gui mode.

>   That being said,is there a way to remove the Xfiles from my BL1 that don't
> belong so I can install the correct ones,or will the correct ones over-write
> the wrong ones.Just doing baby steps here but really want to learn this.Any
> help you guys can provide would be greatly appreciated.

I think BL1 has some kind of counterpart to BL2's (and Slackware's)
removepkg, doesn't it (other listers)?  Or maybe he could use something
like pkgtool for BL1?  Seems like there should be some such way to remove
installed packages.  It's been awhile since I've done anything with BL1,
so I can't say for sure which method would work and be easiest.

> BTW,when the time comes (for me),is there not a way to do BL3 as linux only?

We've discussed ways of doing this onlist recently.  It's not really clear
what the advantages would be: BL3 really does run from a native Linux
filesystem, and it is really installed on your hard drive.  It's just
stored on top of a DOS filesystem.  Anyway, I don't know that Steven would
ever make the sort of install-to-hd routine for BL3 that BL1 and 2 have.
But with Linux, all things are possible :).  Certainly a way of getting
BL3 loaded onto an ext2 partition could be worked out.  Could be a part of
your learning experience, I suppose.  The biggest challenge might be
getting a bootloader installed and working, since all BL's are created to
boot using loadlin (which presupposes DOS).

James

PS On using the FAT16/32 filesystem: one thing that's recently been in the
news is how M$ is starting to file patents for things like xml and the FAT
filesystem.  It looks like they're going to try to try generating revenue
by an intellectual property royalties maneuver - like what SCO is trying
to do with Linux.  In other words, one of the strategies they may use to
stymie open source efforts and keep people locked into their toll system
will be to restrict use to some very commonly used standards like the FAT
filesystem (by requiring people to license it).  Couldn't this be a reason
to consider moving the BL line away from the DOS filesystem, or at least
making it more portable to a pure Linux environment?