On Tuesday 07 May 2002 09:31, you wrote:
> True but often you need a full system to do the simplest tasks or
> upgrades.
"Full System" to do what tasks, linux has a a lot of tools and any
task one could imagine could not involve all of them,
i will have to dismiss as nonsensical, especially since what
tools are on the system is all up to you, such as the
microlinux's like linux on a floppy, linuxrouter project
and other speciality oriented package creations illustrate.
The second part, upgrades Are you demanding to compile
without a compiler ?
You can get updates in binary form in just about every linux
distro I can name, as its their standard upgrade method
others deal only with source, like rocklinux if that what you
want instead.
If you remove all the devtools and strip all the libraries, you
will then have a system that has a drastically smaller footprint
so you would compile stuff elsewhere into stripped packages,
and then install the packages, and then it would be the same
as any binary-only app install everyone is familiar with.
Winblows dont come bundled with symbols in the .dlls .h files and
devtools, and any of the other things, and i hear you complain
not how would your logic above apply equally to winblows ?
See like the shared library complaint you are asserting
an atvantage as the opposite. and the assertion does not
withstand scrutiny.
> I don't use perl so why need my system have it if the only purpose is
> for configure scripts just so I can download the software I want.
Then get the binary,
All non=specialty linuxes i know about come with perl precooked
and software authors take note of what a system can be expected to
have, and code with that in mind, he would look at your aversion
to his use of perl as being unreasonable.
> I guess I am spoiled by T.COM a very nice 4096 byte full screen text
> editor under DOS.
Look at :
http://linuxassembly.org/resources.html#projects
various UNIX projects written in assembly language
of course all of them feature extremely small size
> Other than the 64kb file limit I think it is the best editor out there.
small and simple has a quality all its own doesnt it,
early versions of e3 have a less than 5000 byte foot print
and no 64k limit since it isnt built on that old real mode
tiny memory model, its now up to 12k because of feature creep
such as :
command syntax Wordstar, EMACS, Pico, nedit, vi
independent of libc ( needs no library)
numeric calculator UNDO feature
piping through /bin/sed (using stream editor as a sub process)
are currently designed for Linux and *BSD only,
anyway this opens e3's door to the world of regular expressions.
http://sax.sax.de/~adlibit/
Pretty impressive for a standalone 12k exec eh ?
If you want to craft a linux that runs on really absurdly tiny hardware,
you can do it. IBM demoed a tiny linux on a wrist watch close to same
time time they announced it on their mainframe,
how is that for range of scale.
>I still need to find a good windows/dos text
> editor. I still think a OS needs to fit on a floppy too!
Like linux on a floppy ? there are several of those crafted for different
uses, routers, terminals, net appliance type things, svgaVNC etc.
Really now, are you just tossing stuff up hoping something will stick ?
Unix has had 30 years of people looking for holes and filling
them, in the base you would find it hard to discover any
more existing cracks or gaps to fill.
its all about new drivers and new ideas on things like the VM
to push the performance envelope.
neat stuff for a kernel hacker, but even Linus himself
said that everything exciting was happening in userspace,
Raymond
Received on Tue May 07 2002 - 19:57:51 BST