Ok! i'm taking systems programming in linux and althought i've done a dual install on my computer. i'd like to be able to attend the lab, so the teacher pointed us towards qemu.

But i'm having a problem with gui systems, they're big and bulky. So big in fact that trying to start the gui seems to time out or something, they just don't want to run from the flash drive on my computer. Although i can start them in text mode, they still take up a lot of space on my flash drive unnecessarily.

So far i've tried Inx and Finnix. Inx had trouble with simple things like the "up" button and the "delete" button. Seemed like a long term problem. Finnix just wouldn't let me install vim, which made me sad. It has vi but that doesn't have syntax highlighting which i'm kind of fond of.

Anyway i was hoping for some suggestions on the matter. I'm not that familiar with the different distro's.

Hi,

Some things come to mind:

ttyLinux - easy and nimble, the tar util leaves some to be desired, though. It's a busybox based system, the Busybox tar may not be able to handle the GNU tars...
Finnix - clean, up to date, I missed the make utility in there, though, unless I did'nt know where to look for it...but, you've had a one-on-one with that one already...
Knoppix - complete and up to date. All the needed utils are in there, been using it for a wile, I like it.
Arch Linux - complete distro, after install, the prompt is all there is...

Those are the ones I have direct XP with...I like'em!

Enjoy!

Thor

Yeah i like knoppix, i'm running Xubuntu right now though. but that's installed on my computer.

I think knoppix as a gui doesn't it? i couldn't find a live cd of knoppix that didn't come with a gui but maybe i just didn't know where to look. I think i can start anything without a gui anyway.. or atleast i can with debian. but the gui seems to take a lot of space.. seems pointless. Plus i'm running this off a flash drive so space is kind of a factor.

i kinda liked Arch linux, it was basically like Finnix except it actually had vim. Sadly i wasn't able to make it do syntax highlighting.. or auto-indent.. Think i might try running back to finnix and see if it will do auto-indent. coding without it is kind of a headache.

Anyway, Thank you! you got me moving in a direction and i'm grateful. I'm a little worried i won't be able to find a non-gui linux distro that has vim with syntax highlighting.. But i guess i'm asking for something that's kinda specific.

Anyway, i gotta run to class now so i guess i'll give it another shot tonight. Atleast i got something working.

Take a look at debian
http://wiki.debian.org/BootUsb
http://live.debian.net/project/about/

Kind regards

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/i...SB_Flash_Drive

try that. nothing smaller then DSL linux. as small as 64M, typically 128-512M being ideal.

also does it have to be on a flash drive? if it can be a CD, you can run the knoppix with --toram i think that is the argument and that will store the liceCD into the systems ram instead of running from the CD. this is real nice if the system has 1G or more of RAM and it frees up the CDrom if you have a burner and need to burn any data.

No it does not . Knoppix starts up with a menu (a bit beyond 13 items if I recall) and you decide from there where to go. A full GUI is in there (LXDE) but you fire it up. I usually fire up the shell, option 11.

By the way vim seems to have hiliting, in vim, you'd enter

...but I suspect you'll have to install some extras to make it work as needed!

Thor

i'll definitely check them out when i get home tonight, thx for the replies guys!

But yes it has to go off a usb drive. qemu just lets me run an iso of linux as a virtual machine. It's a neat program, but it seems to be having trouble with gui's on some computers, which makes sense i guess. But using a live cd isn't really an option, i just need the iso of a live cd of linux.. if that isn't too confusing..


EDIT: yeah thor i know, the command wasn't working "out of the box" but i didn't realize i could install extra's on top of vim to make it work. just thought it wasn't possible in that distro.

The only think i'm worried about with having an iso of knoppix is the physical space that's being taken up by a gui i'm not going to use. The flash drive is only 4 gigs from the get go. But i'll give it a shot. It's definitely an option.

DSL is discontinued since 2008

Kind regards

buggerz, that sucks. was nice to have that as an option.

i doubt that. looking over the main web page for DSL, it has been updated much more current then 2008... nothing last year, but i think it might still be a viable option.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

looks like the last update was late 2010. still long in the tooth, but for basic coding and small bootable USB device, this might still be a good option especially if the heavier GUIs (gnome and kde) are giving him fits.

http://livecdlist.com/


Some of the live floppy based may be used on some cd's. Try to burn them to track one of a cd to test.

2 members found this post helpful.

DSL is not dead, just not changing, but there may be better options.

Check out TinyCore and MultiCore (from the same site). You can run with or without desktop in little memory.

If you prefer to go WITHOUT gui, but access to everything standard in the world for development, try Debian Minimal. Small footprint, no fluff, no Xwindows unless you add it, fast, and the Debian repository set is HUGE!

1 members found this post helpful.

In case anyone cared about a status update, after trying out a bunch of distro's i settled.. this is the right word here by the way. Settled on Nimblex.

You get to build it yourself so my build is 300 megs, has vim (No syntax coloring or autoindent or apt-get.. thus the settling D gdb and gcc. which is the important stuff. And it has a gui but i can open it in command line. So it works.. Not my dream distro but it'll work. And it works better then the other 8-ish distro's i tried.

Thanks for the help guys. the cdlist thing was a lot of help. A lot of the distro's had their up's and downs. Slax was pretty neat

For a no GUI get Microcore it is really really small only 8Mb also u can use Tinycore it is has only 10Mb, can run from USB stick. Even the Tinycore with GUI run on most hardware(old and new) without problem, check it out.

Regards