Linux and compact flash drive

calhal · 01-04-2008, 02:16 AM

Hi,
I'm looking for best distro to run from compact flash drive. I'm not satisfied with performance of all "live" distros. I'd like to have a distro which runs from read only filesystem without all that stuff from knoppix, slax or something similar to them.
So my question is if anyone know or tried to do something like this?
What must I modify to run for example Slackware with X+KDE from read only filesystem? Is it possible?

shadowsnipes · 01-04-2008, 10:05 PM

I recommend you look into PuppyLinux. It is really small, fast, and has Slackware compatibility.

calhal · 01-06-2008, 01:32 AM

Thanks for your reply. But like I wrote I don't want any live distros. I'll try to modify standard Slackware for my purpose or make some LFS with my modifications.
I've just thought that someone did something like that before.

AceofSpades19 · 01-06-2008, 01:56 AM

Most live distros that run from a usb drive or a CF card, are really fast, I doubt you could make one much faster that has the same features. For example, Damn Small is only 50 mb but it has most application you need and runs blazingly fast

calhal · 01-06-2008, 02:58 AM

Quote:

Most live distros that run from a usb drive or a CF card, are really fast, I doubt you could make one much faster that has the same features.

Really fast but do you think they are as fast as "normal" distributions?
Worst is time they need to boot with all those squashfs and others.
What I need is X server with my Qt apps,VNC,ssh and RS485 communication driven by my software. If I need very small system I'd use Qtopia instead.
I'm making some embedded device which will be controlled by a 3,5" biscuit PC without any mechanical parts, and It really doesn't need to write anything to filesystem. Stability and boot time are critical.

AceofSpades19 · 01-06-2008, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by calhal

Really fast but do you think they are as fast as "normal" distributions?
Worst is time they need to boot with all those squashfs and others.
What I need is X server with my Qt apps,VNC,ssh and RS485 communication driven by my software. If I need very small system I'd use Qtopia instead.
I'm making some embedded device which will be controlled by a 3,5" biscuit PC without any mechanical parts, and It really doesn't need to write anything to filesystem. Stability and boot time are critical.

well if anything, they are probably faster because most of the time they get loaded into ram and a cf card is alot faster then a harddisk or a cdrom drive

Drakeo · 01-06-2008, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by calhal

Hi,
I'm looking for best distro to run from compact flash drive. I'm not satisfied with performance of all "live" distros. I'd like to have a distro which runs from read only filesystem without all that stuff from knoppix, slax or something similar to them.
So my question is if anyone know or tried to do something like this?
What must I modify to run for example Slackware with X+KDE from read only filesystem? Is it possible?

flash drives are slow because of dma. so if you do the puppy linux do a frugal instal and make a and but from lilo or grub. if you can boot from your flash then do it to . I did a full instal on my flash and the preformance was tereble the frugal install was very fast.

shadowsnipes · 01-06-2008, 08:01 PM

puppylinux is much faster to boot than knoppix and should be faster than dsl. If it isn't fast enough for you then you might be better off doing LFS or a minimal gentoo install or something.