Re: ext2 installation on 486/4MB // bloat

From: Alfie Costa (agcosta@gis.net)
Date: Fri Apr 06 2001 - 19:04:19 CEST


On 4 Apr 2001, at 19:10, Luca <mulinux@sunsite.dk> wrote:

> What about TinyX? I know it runs fine in 4 MB, anybody tried that
> one with muLinux?

Not me...

> I've got a laplink cable, now how do I go about installing muLinux
> on the laptop without doing a UMSDOS install first?

Don't know. I have a laplink cable also and have been trying to connect two mu
boxes. Haven't figured it out yet. (The cable is known to be good because it
works fine in Dos and Win95.)

> Do you think Lyx would run with TinyX? The main real world use of
> the laptop would be typesetting (a thesis). And, to a minor extent,
> web browsing. Talking about web browsing, I suppose running Opera
> is out of question..? I'd be quite happy with Lynx (or maybe Arachne,
> if I get it to run), but Javascript and CSS support would be great.
> Oh well... I realize I'm asking for two much from my lowly 4 MB,
> but I haven't given up hope yet! :)

Haven't tried TinyX. With regular X, Lyx will be slow on a a 4 MB box. Maybe
there's is a good TeX program that doesn't use X? Opera will probably be too
slow. Lynx works OK though.

The trouble is that most of Linux is written in C, this makes Linux portable,
but using C also means that the code compiles big. In the early '80s more
programs were written in assembly language; many of these programs were fast,
tiny, and useful. If assembly were more popular, it would be possible to make
Linux do more work in 4 MB, but efficiency doesn't seem to be a leading design
goal for many programmers at present.

For comic relief, here's a page that makes fun of certain aspects of the
problem (Win9x)...

http://radsoft.net/bloatbusters/b2.htm

Here's a quote from one of their pages...
http://radsoft.net/bloatbusters/sw_dns.htm

<snip>
The Bloatbusters™ Solar Winds Report

The Solar Winds DNS Resolver
Total download: 3.5MB
Total bloat on disk: over 4MB
Total Registry bloat: over 100KB
Overwritten system files: "legion"

The Bloatbusters™ DNS Resolver
Total download: 3KB
Total bloat on disk: 7KB
Total Registry bloat: none
Overwritten system files: none
Written to Solar Winds specifications
DNS Resolver
Solar Winds
3,666,493 bytes download
Price ?

Furor over Solar Winds software, which as a suite of less than ten "vanilla"
networking applications retails for $300 (yes you read that right) has resulted
in one grand and extensive test, which here follows.

The results of the test show conclusively that the suite cannot be worth even
one one-hundredth of its retail price.

Bloatbusters™ will shortly have a comparable app available which will
demonstrate that the complete functionality of the Solar Winds DNS Resolver can
be contained in a package of less than ten kilobytes (10KB).

FLASH! Bloatbusters™ now has this program available! And it is only SEVEN
kilobytes! And you can download it here! The download is only THREE kilobytes!

(Yep! Yer thinking now! The Solar Winds DNS Resolver is OVER FIVE HUNDRED TIMES
as big.)

This program - Bloatbusters™ DNS Resolver - is exactly identical with Solar
Winds' DNS Resolver in the minutest detail - it looks the same, performs the
same - it's even exactly as paraplegic!

But again - it's only seven kilobytes (7KB) - NOT 3.5 megabytes! Download it
now and LEARN!

<snip>

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