Is there a chance that a live-CD version of a 50MB AmigoLinux install will be available soon?
This could fit on a business-card or 8cm -size CD, similar to DamnSmallLinux (see below), and would be immensely useful for portability! How would one go about achieving this, other than reviewing other LQ suggestions regarding source-code? Is this a current work-in-progress?

Here are some notable live-CD's (purposefully omitting Knoppix!)

1) DamnSmallLinux, http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
Debian-based, minimalist but contains many useful packages, and widely-used for carrying around by those who do not want Knoppix's unneeded extra packages (like this user!)

2) Slax, http://slax.linux-live.org/
From http://slax.linux-live.org/download.php, the SLAX rescue version 4.2.0 is supposed to be "coming soon", it weighs in at approximately 32MB, and is described as "SLAX without Xwindow, just console Linux" Like AmigoLinux, it is also based upon Slackware.

3) The LNX-BBC Project, http://www.lnx-bbc.org
Seen as more of a rescue disk, similar to SLAX's 32MB "coming soon" option.

Have already reviewed a similar LQ thread at
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...readid=232726,
as well as Amigo Developer's http://amigolinux.org/docs/minstall/index.htm.
Specifically seeking self-bootable CD-option in such a live CD (systems have CD-ROM drives and BIOS options for booting from CD's), regardless of whether hdd FAT-partitions exist or whether there are even any floppy disk drives present.

TYIA for any feedback on this!

-nycace36

No there will probably NOT be a LIVECD Amigo. What there will be is read-write Slackware compatibilty that runs in/around/on/by/with/near any Windows or Linux installation, from hard drive, USB FLASH or mini hard drive, or without any OS installed installed at all on the machine. And none of the problems or weird tricks to make LiveCD's 'usable' for anything other than what the developer wanted.
The coming Amigo runs more like a live CD than ever, except it's just normal Linux running. No tricks needed to do configuration or add packages. You'll be able to keep it on a tiny HD or FLASH, which are actually more durable than a credit card size.
The other thing is that in order to fit to THAT size, all docs have to be stripped out, everything has to be compressed and everything has to be the lightest available, instead of the most functional. And LIVE CD's are RAM hungry. Amigo can run with 8-16MB RAM.
Live CD's have their place, indeed, but Amigo is trying to fill another need, with very different criteria.

Have http://amigolinux.org/docs/minstall/AmigoHOWTO.htm
opened up. As described in this (see the "45MB minimal installation" section), the 45MB Amigo Linux installs leave NO room on a BBC for
Xwindows (ROXfiler, Dillo, etc.)
-AND- Other packages for productivity available through "wierd tricks"/tweaks/hacks.
FYI, can also make bootable rescue disks from
tomsrtbt http://www.toms.net/rb/download.html, so already have this rescue option for systems w/ floppy drives or CD's.

OTOH, another portable&bootable option besides using a floppy disk, DSL or LNX-BBC (w/ their tricks), full-sized CD, USB-flash, mini-hard-drive, or zipdrive would be to possibly use AmigoLinux's minimal 150MB install option (see above "45MB.." link) on a bootable 8cm CD. Such a mini-CD format has approx. 190MB of usable space, so the only trick would be making such a CD bootable and to decide which exact packages are necessary and what productivity/utility pkgs to really use.

HRef: http://amigolinux.org/download/Amigo2/Amigo2.0.txt
Would another option be to use only 190MB out of the full 225MB listed in this href, compile the Amigo2.0 sources onto a 190MB hdd FAT partition, copy the binaries and directories onto the 190MB CD and make the CD bootable itself?
Could exactly tailor this for productivity/games/X -or- docs/man/rescue/network (noX)
bootable no-tricks mini-CDs.

The trimming down of unused fat from 225MB to under 190MB could let this work on such a portable (and durable) 8cm CD.

A good live-CD project for a Bootable and Portable 8cm CD ??

-nycace36

Actually, yes it would make a good project. You know pat V. came out with one of the first LiveCD's. It takes a little different approach than the Knoppix family and is easy to create.
You don't have to compile anything to add to Amigo, just add regular Slackware packages and configure it the same way. if you need something 'extra', get it from linuxpackages.net.
if you read the LONG minimal install HOWTO(God help you...), you'll see that one of the criterias for Amigo is to not break the Slackware packages, or interfere with Slackware configuration tools. Hence, you don't get much with 150MB.
I have considered doing something similar and a user who has frequent power outages is working on this - to make Amigo bootable as read-only or read-write from the same system.
The new main version IS going to be larger, since more hardware will be supported and will include more desktop apps. It grows exponentially, though, since it also includes gtk2 glibc, Firefox, Thunderbird and maybe Abiword. Once you get gtk installed all you need is aspell and libglade to get abiwrod going, but without help system.
Amigo is meant to be an easily extendible, lightweight, base system with comfortable GUI. Every one wants something 'personal'. Amigo makes it easy to customize -add any of a thousand packages between Slackware official and linuxpackages.net

TY for encouragement, gnashley!
Would like to follow through on this.

Both DSL and SLAX not only have the base liveCD, but they also have additional packages (tweaked) to work together with the basic liveCD's packages. DSL refers to these additional packages as "myDSLextensions" (see http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/dis...dsl/index.html).
SLAX refers to these additional packages as "modules" (see http://slax.linux-live.org/modules.php)

The bad things about these extra packages are that many of these tweaked packages are less thoroughly tested than the standard compiled Debian .deb and Slackware .tgz pkg's (both DSL's and SLAX's extra pkg's are rated) and if compiled into binary form on low-RAM systems (as the yellow-rated DSL extensions are) will inevitably bloat up the liveCD booting cycle.
Similar to this, Knoppix boots up more slowly than DSL, given the extra pkg's present on its liveCD.

OTOH, there are several positive features of these features. One can copy these extra packages onto other media for non-immediate use, so that these are truly modularized. One choice would be to copy all needed compressed and uncompiled extra packages for a specific purpose (e.g., network/security, office productivity, web/e-mail/ftp, .etc.) onto one mini-CD each, for later hdd transfer, compilation and usage.
If one directly copies these to a hard drive (say to a /usr/local directory) and afterwards compile these, then one could do some effective performance tweaking for any future use of such packages on the hard drive. The first step would probably be to make a large enough harddrive swapfile partition to allow low-XWindows-pkgs usage on 16MB RAM systems (DSL finds and activates pre-existing swap partitions when it boots).

This use of a liveCD along with copying the extra packages onto harddrive partitions would grant the user the best of both worlds, i.e., fast and secure OS booting from the mini-CD, followed by effective use of required modularized packages already on the hard drive. IMHO, a user should also have the choice to fully install the working Linux-OS onto the harddrive as does Knoppix and DSL.

AmigoLinux basically has the latter (modularized packages) completely in place, what with the basic zipslack packages of Amigo 2.0 and the ability to use Slackware's own /slackware/<diskset> packages, as gnashley writes in the previous reply. Would probably leave out some larger apps such as Opera 7.23, Firefox, Thunderbird, ... etc. on the bootable liveCD, but include th smaller sciTE on this; this liveCD would need to be intermediate in size between the 225MB Amigo2.0 install (http://amigolinux.org/download/Amigo2/Amigo2.0.txt) and the 135MB Amigo-II-flux install (http://amigolinux.org/download/others/Amigo-II-flux.txt)

The very first step after deciding which composite of these two Amigo install options to use, would be to make the actual bootable mini-CD. How does one do this? hmmm...


-nycace36

Look at how Pat does it with Slackware CD #2.
Study the initrd.gz inside /isolinux
To conserve space you can delete everything in /usr/docs /usr/man and /usr/info
Study my minimal install HOWTO's more, even if tedious, as it will tell you exactly what each thing does.
Even without breaking any Slackware packages, which I don't do, you can star with the 45MB list, then add X and misc-fonts and fluxbox. That gives you X running in about 135MB. Start from there.
Also you can use mkzisofs to compress everything, or use upx and compress even better.
Then just use the packages like DSL does which are all gtk1 or xaw libs. Amigo1 and Amigo2 use gtk1 apps mostly. I don't like xaw apps like xpdf, xfm,Ted. They are very light weight, but ugly and with a bit awkward functionality that I find 'unFriendly' for new users.
My next main release, based on Slackware 10 goes just the opposite, using gtk2 apps and more python stuff. It will also include more desktop apps such as word processor and spreadsheet , multi-media and others.

Thanks for your helpful advice gnashley!

Here are ten of key URL's/hrefs, some of which you referred to above, that I address below:

1) AmigoLinux Minimal Install HOWTO
http://amigolinux.org/docs/minstall/AmigoHOWTO.htm
2) ibiblio Slackware /isolinux contents http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...10.0/isolinux/
3) Two relevant HOWTO's from tldp (10)
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux-Init-HOWTO.html
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux-i386-Boo...WTO/index.html
4) Two relevant guides from tldp (10)
http://tldp.org/guides.html#lfs
http://tldp.org/guides.html#pocket
5) The AmigoLinux Package List
http://amigolinux.org/download/Amigo2/Amigo2.0.txt
6) The DamnSmallLinux Package List http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/packages.html
7) The SLAX Package List
http://slax.linux-live.org/installed_packages.txt
8) Two Slackware Package Lists
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...ware/FILE_LIST
http://www.linuxpackages.net/packages.php
9) Slackware's Documentation Packages (f-set)
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...0/slackware/f/
10) The Linux Documentation Project
http://tldp.org/

> Look at how Pat does it with Slackware CD #2.
> Study the initrd.gz inside /isolinux
> Study my minimal install HOWTO's more,
> even if tedious, as it will tell you exactly
> what each thing does.
Am still going through your "tedious" documentation (1) and /isolinux suggestion (2), as well as href's (3) and (4) on boot-up internals. Think that this will keep me busy for awhile!


> And LIVE CD's are RAM hungry. Amigo can
> run with 8-16MB RAM.
I see this. In comparing your AmigoLinux 2.0 package list (5) with DSL's (6) and SLAX's (7), I clearly see that yours are much leaner (w/o having to resort to various compression tricks). IMHO, would have to say that DSL accomplishments are the standard to beat for a live Slackware-based CD-distro that works on a range of hardware.
Also from the opposite end, it clearly seems that SLAX is more similar to Knoppix in terms of having full packages and requiring higher-end HW-reqs, as opposed to the leanness and low HW-reqs of DSL and AmigoLinux.

> Even without breaking any Slackware
> packages, which I don't do, you can start
> with the 45MB list, then add X and
> misc-fonts and fluxbox. That gives you
> X running in about 135MB. Start from there.
Would have to more carefully review package lists of hrefs (5) through (7), as well as the suggestions in your replies before testing in a personally-revised <190MB compilation. One could compare this with the full Slackare package list (8) as you do in your own discussion for the packages you use (1).

> You don't have to compile anything to add to
> Amigo, just add regular Slackware packages
> and configure it the same way. if you need
> something 'extra', get it from
> linuxpackages.net.
Note again (as you emphasize here) that if a minimalist Slackware-based bootable liveCD is created and a harddrive is present, the whole or subset of Slackware's packages (8) can be left on a harddrive's /usr/local partition or onto a separate CD as an 'extra'. This could definitely include Slackware's own documentation, the f-set (9).

>To conserve space you can delete everything
> in /usr/docs /usr/man and /usr/info
Makes great sense. Besides keeping the man-pages off of the liveCD, tldp's HOWTOS, Guides, FAQ's (10) can also be stored separately on the harddrive, or as .txt/.ps/.pdf ready-to-read docs on 8cm-CDs.

Question: Which other distros listed at the ibiblio distribution page ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/ (besides amigolinux, damnsmall, knoppix, slackware, and slax) would be useful for the above?

TY again for your responses to date!

-nycace36

nycace36, perhaps you'd be interested in joining the Amigo project- I have a need for experienced Slackers to help implement more of what Amigo needs. I was greatly inspired by DSL, but with Amigo I'm trying to take away all the disadvantages of LiveCD's and still retain some of the benefits they bring.
I may be about to receive a financial 'push' to help make Amigo more useable and available to folks in developing countries.
If you haven't tried Amigo, do so. You'll see that it starts and runs like a LIVECD, but is completely read-write and 100% Slackware compatible. Runs and acts just like 'ordinary' Linux, without any special tricks to add packages or save configs. And it can be run stand-alone from a USB FLASH or memory card.
Actually, I have planned a release that can be used read-only like a liveCD, for protection against power outages, data corruption etc. But it can also be booted read-write so that configs can be done or packages added.
I think that all the effort to create, remaster, modify and configure liveCD's is too much. It's all just to overcome the basic limitation of read-write. Why not just use a read-write medium and be done? Within 12 Months a 512MB FLASH will probably cost around $15 or less. Just as durable and portable as a CD. And if you don't like what's on it, delete and use the device some other way.
Unused CD's, whether they have Linux installation or a LiveCD distro, make great coasters for coffee cups when you are done with them!
LiveCD users must become complete experts before being able to even run 'passwd'! You need 3GB of RAM+Swap to remaster a fullCD. You need to know all about 'compressed loops', etc. and be able to master a command line of around 200 characters to make the ISO image.
If you'd like to help make a real difference, get involved with Amigo. I may soon even be able to PAY for qualified help.
amigo@ibiblio.org

gnashley,

Am still at the starting stages of (2)-(4)

As far as addressing the whole issue of the +/-'s of read-write, it would be well to go back and review the background of starting this "Amigo Bootable Business Card" thread from a top down approach.

Schematically
HW -- > BIOS --> mbr/map/initrd/linuz/lilo/grub --> kernel/modules

1. HW: Many of the systems I still work with (HW test, diskless-workstation PC's) are those old 486, low Pentium I CPU's with 16MB or less RAM, and small or no hdd's. Many originally had no CD-ROMd 's or 2X-4X CD-ROMd's and some of these were operated through sound cards like the Aztech series, instead of through the PRI/SEC IDE controllers on their m-brds. These old "soundcard CD-ROMd's" have now all been replaced w/ standard ATAPI CD-ROMd's.

2. The BIOS's on these system's even when upgraded/flashed, can only boot the standard A, C, CD-ROM devices. Cannot obtain updated BIOS chips themselves for these m-brds, even if slots are available for USB cards for the USB flash devices which you mention, and which are common now.
Bootable floppies such as from your startup .img download and tomsrtbt are great portable rescue/test bootable options for these systems! The only problem is that IMHO, floppy disks keep getting corrupted over time, so these have to continually be re-created Hard-drive installation is often the best installation for such systems when they have hdd's and no capacity to boot external devices such as USB devs, thus, the great use for Amigo

Back to HW:One problem w/ hdd-installation even w/ Amigo is that hdd's are devices w/ moving parts which eventually fail (measured in MTBF), albeit MUCH slower than floppies. I see that CD's and bootable CD's themselves get corrupted much less than floppies, usually by scratches and nicks when they do. When the CD-ROMd's are kept clean and CD's are handled&stored carefully, then liveCD-booting can conceivably approach the MTBF of hdd's. If the low-end systems mentioned above have working CD-ROMd's, liveCD use is thus better than using floppies and should approach the physical lives of hdd's.

3. MBR: Without going too much into the dynamics of how the mbr loads lilo and grub, the fact that the mbr is on the hdd means that the mbr is susceptible to hdd corruption and conceivably susceptible to mbr/boot-sector viruses; see
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/docs/Ha...er-virus.shtml
Although, these mbr problems apply alike both to floppies and CD's, it seems clear that a very-cleanly created liveCD used instead of a bootable hdd would greatly reduce hdd-mbr problems.

4. kernel/modules. Having extra modules on a distro makes it larger and can slow down boot-time. For example, tomsrtbt leaves off extra modules, Knoppix includes extra modules, and Slackware itself uses hotplug for live module-detection.
Simply do not want the gamut of rarely-used extra modules for such lower-end systems, especially for diskless WS clients with few peripherals (no USB, soundcards, etc).

IMHO, DSL is the best of breed for all of this.

From all of this above, here are my specs for an ideal Slackware-based liveCD (not SLAX):

1. CD (not floppy, nor external device such as USB flash)
2. Portable to fit in pocket, e.g. 8cm mini-CD
3. Minimalist, can be used as rescue disk for low-end HW
(in terminal runlevel 2)
4. Has some basic, low-end network connectivity, Xwindows (fluxbox), Internet (Dillo), productivity (scITE, TED), ... etc. for higher runlevels.
5. No unusual tricks used to make proprietary liveCD pckgs work.
6. Docs, man-pages, larger Slackware-based apps (OpenOffice, mozilla, Opera, ... etc.) to be run from zipdrives or from hdd /usr/local partitions when needed, after liveCD booted.

When I wish to install a full Slackware-based system onto such systems' harddrives to make them "BIOS C:-bootable", then I could use the standard Amigo on systems with low-RAM/low-diskspace, or for higher-end systems, the full Slackware/Vector/College distros.

-nycace36

Well, you've yet yourself a nice goal! Lot's to learn... Here's a link for a HOWTO using the Slackware method.
http://www.linuxpackages.net/howto.p...e=livecd+HOWTO