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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] Opera works in BasicLinux 3.50
  • Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 20:04:07 +0000 (UTC)

On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 Sindi wrote:

Message from Steven
===================
Sindi wrote:

The people I am putting this together for
will come back to me if they need any other
applications. They don't always have a spare
partition or want to risk shrinking their FAT32
partition so I want something that fits in a
50MB loop file, or at least in 100MB.

The BL3 foundation plus Opera 9.21 is 28mb.
Opera 8 is smaller.

Opera 7.23 - about 12000K
Opera 8.52 - 14278K
Opera 9.21 - 16476K

The Opera 9.21 for Slackware 8.0/8.1 loads with the SW8.1 glibc 2.2.25.

Archived versions only have a choice of rpm, deb, tar.gz and tar.bz2. I don't know what glibc the archived versions need. The earlier version 9
(9.02?) I downloaded did not work with 2.2.25. The two generic 'static' versions on the menu appear to be rpm and deb.

SW9.0 glibc 2.3.1 is a slightly smaller package (they split it up) but the glibc library is 25K larger. I have not needed 2.3.1 except for QEMU.

Lots of people just want a browser and email
and a wordprocessor that prints.

Opera + AbiWord will fit into 50mb, but they
both can generate a lot of files. 100mb is
probably about right.

I reset the default Opera parameters to a smaller disk cache, which empties on exit.


If I were doing a fool-proof system for a naive
user, I would use a ramdisk for the root filesystem.
It would be a minimal root filesystem. X and all
the applications would be on a different filesystem
(loop or partition) that is checked (e2fsck) and
then mounted at /usr. X is auto-executed and all
the available applications are in the jwm menu.
Exiting jwm reboots the system.

How would you start X during boot?
How would you use the ramdisk? As in BL3 FD or loop?

When the user gets into trouble (which will no doubt
happen), he simply resets the machine and gets a nice
clean ramdisk and an automatic fsck for his files.

The ramdisk filesystem is limited and volatile so
something will need to be done about /tmp and /home
(and any other directories that accumulate files).
Separate filesystems could be used for /tmp and /home
or you could simply symlink them into the /usr filesystem
( /usr/tmp /usr/home ).

I don't think I am capable of this yet.

A friend's student thinks he needs a faster computer
for the internet so I offered to make his faster.

Is he on dial-up? If so, his slowness is not caused
by the computer. If he's on broadband, you may be able
to speed things up for him, but you'd better leave plenty
of room for the stuff he downloads. At broadband speed
he's going to accumulate many many megabytes.

I asked about ISP and hardware - no answer yet.

I have no idea how to set up for cable modem. DSL modems are often USB only. We have two of those that work with linux (in theory). So far we are only asked for help with dialup internet. People who have the money for broadband tend to buy new computers with Windows on them.

Abiword that you compiled is 'static' and appears not to require any X libraries. Do any BL3 X-based add-ons besides icewm (libXpm) need additional X libraries that Opera does not use? freecell?

Cheers,
Steven

Sindi




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