Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> Sindi Keesan wrote:
> >
> > > BL1  2.0.34  464762
> > > BL3  2.2.16  435775
> > 
> > How did you get it smaller than the older kernel?  
> 
> By eliminating many unnecessary capabilities.
> 
> > Are there features missing that we might want to have, 
> > as a reason to also use the BL1 kernel once in a while?
> 
> The BL1 kernel is the bare.i kernel from Slackware 3.5.
> It has the full range of capabilities.

Okay, no need to even copy it from BL1 then, I can download if needed for 
experiments with sound.  What other capabilities omitted from BL3 would 
people normally want bare.i for?
 
> > So is there any advantage to anyone of using BL1, 
> 
> Not really.  BL3 is a big improvement over BL1.
> Leaner/faster and more capable.
> 
> > I have been using DOS on it.  I don't know if I have space 
> > for 6M swap and linux and DOS.  
> 
> How big is the HD?  Even 40mb is enough:
> -----------
> DOS      25
> BL3      10 
> swap      5
> -----------
> After you install BL3, delete the contents of /usr/X11R6.
> That should give you a comfortable amount of room to work
> with.  BTW swap is not optional for 3mb RAM.  You definitely
> need swap if you want to run Linux with so little RAM.

30MB drive.  I will see if we can find a larger drive among the dead 386 
and 486 laptops that is compatible with that computer.   I could remove 
Arachne from DOS to make space and have DOS in 5MB.

> 
> > It sounds like linux and links with a viewer won't work 
> > in 3MB RAM 
> 
> The viewer needs svgalib.  That's when 3mb RAM gets overloaded.
Perhaps with swap space and low color depth it would work (4-bit).
I will experiment and measure RAM usage with Xvesa plus xli, links plus 
zgv, and links graphical (the latter both svgalib).

> > > A stripped version of vimage.  It only views GIFs.
> > I see why you switched to xli and Xvesa.
> 
> That's not why I switched to Xvesa.  I could have put a more 
> capable viewer in BL1 without switching to X.
Would the more capable viewer (based on svgalib?) take up less RAM than X?  

> > BL3 does seem better in all respects (other than the lack 
> > of ftp).
> 
> ftp is not worth the space (which is limited to what can fit
> on two floppies).  ftp downloads are better handled by wget.  

We had a problem with ftp uploads and ftpput, which won't put to addresses 
starting with a '.'  But probably nobody else was assigned such a strange 
address.  And busybox wget would not do * downloads.  ftp uploads are used 
when constructing websites, or do people have some other way?

> Fewer users need ftp uploads (you are the only one who seems 
> to miss it).  The ftp client was removed in BL2.  There was 
> no good reason to restore it in BL3.  I would, however, be 
> happy to consider creating an add-on package for ftp.

That would be helpful, and might save you time in explaining how to add 
it.  

> 
> Cheers,
Steven