Welcome to the Feather Linux Forum

This forum is for the discussion of Feather Linux.

--jeremy

I also welcome everyone to the forum - here's a few links for Feather Linux:

http://featherlinux.berlios.de
Download - http://featherlinux.berlios.de/download.htm
Forums - http://featherlinux.berlios.de/phpBB2/index.php

Welcome aboard!

I found a review of Feather Linux via Distrowatch:

http://www.rippleweb.org/2004/07/feather_linux_m.html

Sounds very neat, to squeeze everything into 64mb is cool. The idea of having a bootable USB drive is interesting too

mark

I've found Feather to be a really cool distro so far. It has really come in handy when I need to move files from other systems (Windows or Linux) on the go quickly and easily. It loads up quickly on various systems old and new, and I noticed in the Docs section on the Feather website instructions for rolling your own Feather LiveCD with packages you choose yourself. I'm going to try that soon as it looks really cool.

I know several people with old systems who stick with Windows and burning free custom Feather LiveCDs for them with programs that they enjoy using would really impress them, without them having to have a distro installed on their drive. Yes, I'm aware of the other LiveCD distros that exist and I've used several of them. But for me Feather seems to do the jobs I need to do quickly and easily.

Oh my, I just noticed a new version of Feather is out. A downloading I go! :-)

Will Feather Linux be publishing a cheat sheet same as Knoppix?

As well as Fluxbox and Dillo?

Review:

Downloaded on WinME IE6.0; Burn ISO with MagicISO.

Boot into old socket 7 motherboard with 256 mb of sdram. Components included S3 Trios64 1 mb video card, USB 2.0 PCI card, CMI 8738 sound card. No hdd, but a dvd and floppy.

Boots into Knoppix 3.4 basically 2.4.26. Surprised to find vga 640x480 resolution, but 800x600 is more useable; 32 bit color is recommended. Then fluxbox. Had to learn about the right click on the USB mouse, on desktop, to get menu.

After exploring menu, had to learn "sudo passwd" in console, to configure PPP to do external dialup modem. ISP and email accounts are setup seperately in ppp and sylphead.

Everything is barely minimal, no fringes. But all personal data save on hd or floppy, can be a click away in the menu. Then you don't have to setup your computer next time if you have that floppy handy during boot.

On the otherhand, 256 mb RAM is ample, no swap file(virtual memory) to slow down the cpu. Suspect 128 mb of RAM is sufficient. Option 2.6.x kernel will use the RAM efficiently. Need cheat sheet to do boot prompt.

Hardware compatibility does require components on the motherboard to fit the drivers(USB hub, scsi, ethernet, pppoe) supplied. Knoppix Linux tradition holds. But USB device drivers beyond hotplug are installed in desktops. Application and drivers are closely coupled in gqcam, cups, etc. Modern Linux uses more and more sockets and plug-ins to make drivers more universally applicable.

I give this distro, rating of A+. when you go for small footprints, make sure you still have minimum standards of automation. A few more fringes to be more colorful; make life interesting. I expect Feather Linux will grow in size.

You have a root shell option as well, so there's no need to go about doing sudo passwd. Does the PPP configuration tool ask you for a root password?

Yes.

If root password is root, things will be a lot easier.

In liveOS, password is meaningless. Each boot is a new installation. Personal data is only fit for each boot, you take everything(data) and operating system away with you. My email data(Yahoo free 100 mb account) is all stored on the internet portals, with failsafe Raid redundency safe keeping.

Meets government tempest security standards, except radio frequency silence.

We all look for other linux applications to improve experience, but adding scripts in small footprints is more productive, using plug-ins.

More feathers? More modules(audio and video data compression for experience and search engine for file manager and download accelerator manager) for Dillo, not firefox or opera.

Feather is great,rob does a great job and is very helpful and involved,welcome aboard

I'm now visiting with a new Feather install. Yeah' ! Works great! Good job! I love these mini distros.
btw' with every post (LQ) I get, "Warning:This page uses the NON-STANDARD meta refresh tag.
The HTML 4.01 SPEC (sec 7.4.4) recommends explicitly to avoid it.The author wanted you to go here after 1 second." in Dillo. I suppose I can turn this off someohow I just have not looked around yet.

~strokes goatee in thought~ hmmmmmmmmm a new linux distro...... I have played with a few distros (and am Linux+ certified as well) and as yet haven't played with a mini such as I've noticed with Feather.

(first post as well too

Anyone have any thoughts on a distro that would work on an old 486 laptop with only a floppy drive? I mean an OLD laptop.....only a 200mg HD. This thing is freaking ANCIENT!! I can't even figure out how to get a CD hooked up to it externally. *from an A+ certified techie LOL*

sheeeeeeeeeeeesh LOL

welcome aboard Feather!

Shawn29
A+, Linux+, MCP

486 laptop needs parallel port to do scsi to have cdrom installed. Knoppix 3.4 may work with scsi.

You need a minimum of 128 mb to avoid using hdd. If you install it on the hdd, 61.8 mb; you could have virtual memory to help with lack of memory. Very slow though.

I have a cdrom that works in linux and hooks up through the parallel port. Very useful for work on old laptops. However they seem to be very hard to come by nowadays, unless you want to pay $50+. So I'm happy to still have mine!

What you can do is somehow get the compressed KNOPPIX image from Feather onto the old 486's hard drive, and then use a bootfloppy. If you have a net connection, just download the ISO, mount it somewhere and copy the KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX file to a /KNOPPIX folder on your hard drive. Then just download boot.img - the CD bootfloppy - and run.