Comments on: Three more attempts: GRML, MiniNo, Tiny Core

By: Michal

Michal — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 06:52:40 +0000

Hey, interesting blog. You’re a kin to me. I have a stash of old laptops too. The oldest being a ca.1992 386SX/4MBRam/Monochrome laptop. One day it will boot linux.
For now I have managed to boot an Omnibook 800CL with 16MB into Microcore. And an 80MB Ram one into TinyCore w/ Xfbdev (Xvesa does not work on these). I made them into picture frame:
http://minkbot.blogspot.com

An alternative to initrd (which requires more ram) is to unpack it onto the HD and use it as root. And also set up swap partition. This works miracles with small memory machines. Of course, it’s a manual process which avoids the original installer. Also, avoids problems with booting from floppy/cd/usb (which I did not have for my laptops).

By: mrreality

mrreality — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:29:53 +0000

o thats right forgot you went ssd on that one

By: Gutterslob

Gutterslob — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:14:22 +0000

I’d love to hear more on GRML. Heard of it a few times, but never got round to trying it.

Wonder if the ISO will install to my netbook’s hdd via a usb drive (problematic with many Debian offshot distros).

Might give it a go if I find time. Is this the installer you were referring to, Kmandla? http://grml.org/grml2hd/gallery/ If so, then yes, it does look pretty impressive.

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:42:23 +0000

Basically I use qemu (qemu-launcher is a godsend, by the way), boot the ISO, and install it like a normal system. I use a RAW image file of only 1.9Gb, so it will fit on a normal USB stick. I run the installer in the same way I would on a real system, and everything is written to the image file.

dd that image file to the USB stick, boot the target machine on Slitaz Base, and use dd again to write it across USB1.1. Transfer times are about 45 minutes for the final write. And generally speaking it works fine. There is always an odd egg, but for the most part, I get no hassles with this method.

I’ll go into more detail some time in the future.

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:39:44 +0000

By … not using a hard drive.

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/poor-mans-ssd/

There is no spoon.

By: mrreality

mrreality — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 19:47:07 +0000

when you said
“I don’t know the total, but I am certain it has been home to something in the double-digits, for number of installs.”
how to you keep your hard drive healthy doing that much on a older hd?
thanx

By: n2j3

n2j3 — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 17:30:11 +0000

Could you document, whenever you have the time, what you mean by “put[ting] together a system in an emulator that has all the necessary pieces (wireless-tools, Xorg and drivers, etc.) and writ[ing] it across USB.” I’d be hugely indebted as it seems like an interesting and hassle-free way of toying around with slow/old computers & distro-testing.

By: samspade10

samspade10 — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:49:02 +0000

Surely if Slitaz or Puppy doesn’t work, nothing else will?