torios team mailing list archive

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On Thu, July 2, 2020 2:07 pm, Israel Dahl wrote:
> @Laura thanks for wanting to help!  I think our goals overlap well, and
> could do with more hands on deck.  My main goal for ToriOS is to make
> things easy to use, and look fairly nice on as old of hardware as
> possible.

I'm still working on/trying to find lightweight alternatives that will
work better on older systems than a lot of the typical programs offered. 
I really like how ToriOS makes good use of the FLTK GUI.  Will be trying
to put together patches on some of the FLTK programs I use and upload them
soon.  There are only about 3 or 4 other distributions I know about that
specifically try to make use of FLTK programs (including NanoLinux,
TinyCore Linux, 4Mlinux).

I'm also looking into SDL based applications and trying to determine
whether it's better to use the latest version of SDL (which takes more
resources) or try to continue to work with SDL 1.2.15.  I'm trying to
backport some helper libraries to 1.2.15 now, but I'm also looking at
adding SDL 2.x support to some SDL 1.2.15 applications.  Would be
interested in hearing opinions from others on which SDL version they
prefer.

> I really want to join forces with all the small distros to form a common
> base, or some way to share all our niche programs.  I think this would be
> the most helpful!

I think the main distribution that actively tries to reach users with
older machines is Puppy Linux.  They have several custom programs as well.
 They also have several tools to build distributions automatically
including one that uses Debian as a base.  However, there would be some
differences with how ToriOS does things such as the package manager and
making more use of the root user.  One of my favorite distributions that's
based on Debian is AntiX.  Don't know if we can share any resources with
them, but AntiX works very well on older hardware.  It has some nice
custom software that works well on low resource machines too.  Plus, it's
systemd free for those who don't like systemd being so inclusive and
trying to do several jobs instead of one job well.  Would be interested to
see some statistics on whether systemd or its alternatives work better on
older computers, but my guess is that it's going to depend on the
hardware.  One other advantage is that it has several tools for doing
respins in ISO or flash drive format.  The other small Linux distributions
I've looked at are working with the musl C library instead of glibc.  I
recently heard from the developer of Cucumber Linux.  He's stopped that
project and is now working on fidelix but it's oriented to server use and
uses pkgsrc (which he said is working out very well).  If we switched to
musl, the system would be more lightweight and would allow for static
compilation.  However, you'd lose compatibility with Debian unless you
could pull off something similar to what Bedrock Linux does.  Some of the
lightweight programs that the musl based distributions use might be
helpful though.  Also, Debian does allow for installation of the musl
compiler along with the standard gcc/glibc compiler.  Might be interesting
to see if packages or programs compiled with the different C libraries
could coexist in some easier way.  There are also options like TinyCore
Linux.  However, I wonder how well that works for older computers since
it's geared to using as much RAM as possible.

I think ToriOS and AntiX are the main distributions I know when it comes
to targeting older systems and remaining Debian based.  Also, many
distributions are moving away from 32 bit support and offering only 64 bit
support.  Might be worth looking into how likely it is that Debian will go
this route as well and what to do in case that happens.  I've noticed
several forums mentioning issues with getting a modern browser that works
in 32 bit as well.  That could be a serious issue at some point and
already is with some other distributions.

Sincerely,
Laura
http://lmemsm.dreamwidth.org