[sf-lug] Additional information: attention John S. and anyone interested in Slackware 15.0, RPi

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

> John, should he read this can go to the tinycore, Quick & Easy
> Overview at <http://www.tinycorelinux.net/overview.html#require> .
> Tiny Core seems almost overwhelmingly versatile and is easly adapted
> to embedded systems running in appliances of various sorts or as a
> limited but powerful system maintained on a Live Flash drive.

I like their spirit.  The minimal install system weighs in at 11MB
as a perfectly fine graphical system with FLWM window manager and VESA
video-mode support, _but_ is also highly modular and can be fleshed out
using whatever else the user wishes.  Putting together an _11MB_ desktop
system in 2022 is a feat worthy of respect, and it should be noted that
they didn't even pare down the system in the usual embedded fashion by
using an alternative, lightweight libc such as musl, uClibc, or
dietlibc.  So, this really _isn't_ as tiny as a true embedded
distribution -- because it relied on glibc, which is a bit monstrous.
But, by way of compensation, that means easy access to the largest
possible sets of software as build-out options.

> One problem is that you are going to have to learn a bit
> about Linux if you want to really do anything with the even heaviest
> version of TinyCore.

Some of us would not see that as a problem, for a number of reasons
including liking to actually have some basic knowledge of the things we
work with, from day to day.

> In the same issue:
> 
> Fans of the Raspberry Pi single board computer received some good news
> this week. To date, setting up a Raspberry Pi computer has typically
> required the owner to either purchase a microSD card with a stock
> operating system on it or, more commonly, to download an operating
> system using another computer and use the second computer to write the
> operating system to the Pi's microSD card. In short, most people
> needed a second computer in order to use their Raspberry Pi.  You
> don't need that extra computer any longer.  It can download and write
> a hopefully later OS to to the microSD card.

I'd be utterly astonished if any significant people on the planet both
acquire a Raspberry Pi as their only computers _and_ have zero friends
owning computers who could download a small image file an write it to a
microSD card.  For that tiny fraction of people, ordering a preloaded
microSD in the mail was (already) always practical -- but, sure, now 
there's yet another way to do that.


> 2022-02-07 NEW • Distribution Release: OpenMandriva Lx 4.3o uses systemd
> but despite that debility I downloaded a copy to try on a machine
> without net connections.  Frankly I don't trust the makers.
 
What about OpenMandriva Lx raised this concern, Bobbie?  Someething
specific?