Pipsqueak Linux: A new minimalistic distro.

[bendib]

Well, I like TTYLinux, but it's not perfect, so I have decided to make a spin. I have completed the first prototype, which has everything I need so far. It will be changed much more, but this is it for today. I call it Pipsqueak Linux. To download Pipsqueak, visit here: http://geekinsnthings.homelinux.org/pipsqueak
I now have a good news page that is visible through the above link.

ATTENTION: A few hours ago the server was down, and people here attempted to download pipsqueak just to have it fail. The server is running fine now. It was the router doing that thing that they sometimes do.

[Lightstar]

While I was downloading it, the download stopped, and now the page wont load. Maybe I'm not the only one who decided to click it and we made the server explode! boom!

[chris4585]

I get failure to connect, and I'm really interested :<

[v1ad]

Yea Server is down

[P4man]

As a side note, if ttylinux is not perfect (and im sure it isnt), wouldnt it be better to cooperate with them and help make it perfect rather than spinning/forking ?

Its just a general observation I have that in the linux world we do this far too often and we have a gazillion distributions and very few that actually work and are maintained properly. 24 different video editors and none that is actually good. Would be nice if people cooperated more often rather than keep reinventing the wheel and making "their own" app/distro/whatever .If people working on pitivi, cinerella and kdenlive would bundle their forces, we might have had something rivaling premiere by now.

anyway, sorry for ranting :)

[fatality_uk]

Gimme FullFat distro's any time. Ram is cheap, Quad Core is ubiquitous and we now usually measure HD space in TB's. I really don't see the need for any more light distro's.

[user1397]

Gimme FullFat distro's any time. Ram is cheap, Quad Core is ubiquitous and we now usually measure HD space in TB's. I really don't see the need for any more light distro's.
for those that have older systems and who can't afford newer ones, oh and netbooks...

[Shining Arcanine]

What is the point of having another minimalistic distribution? We already have Gentoo Linux which is about as minimal as things can be by default. There are also forks of it to address various concerns (e.g. binary packages). What does this distribution do that Gentoo Linux does not already do?

[rahilm]

i think linux people should concentrate on making a maximalistic distro....

[Shining Arcanine]

i think linux people should concentrate on making a maximalistic distro....

It has been done:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/default.aspx

[rahilm]

It has been done:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/default.aspx

yes something like that

[tica vun]

Gimme FullFat distro's any time. Ram is cheap, Quad Core is ubiquitous and we now usually measure HD space in TB's. I really don't see the need for any more light distro's.

Because the reason I bought a 4 core CPU and 8GB of ram is so I can watch it idle and brag about using less than 100mb of ram.

[Shining Arcanine]

Because the reason I bought a 4 core CPU and 8GB of ram is so I can watch it idle and brag about using less than 100mb of ram.

The RAM is used as a cache by the kernel, which could in theory use 8GB to cache disk files.

Anyway, if you compile software like Open Office, having 8GB of RAM would allow you to mount a tmpfs directory for the compilation, so all of the files are held in memory with no going to the disk. Open Office needs 6GB of disk space to be built, so you need 8GB of RAM to be able to build it entirely in system memory.

[Macchi]

As a side note ...

... Would be nice if people cooperated more often rather than keep reinventing the wheel and making "their own" app/distro/whatever ...


I may agree with the frustration of seeing yet another niche Linux distribution.
But paradoxically, reinventing the same thing again and again can be either very inefficient or may be also the road to perfection!

Competition and cooperation have been walking hand in hand along our evolution history. Both are required. I am glad that Linus had the time and energy to redesign and rewrite a system inspired on minix and unix.

Thus, the pisquick tty whatever is far from a generic OS, but may become a good base for a few custom applications out there. Despite all existing open source micro embedded real-time wonders on one extreme, or the full fat graphics multi-gig multi-processors on the other end.

(Sorry, I could not resist to write a comment)

[K.Mandla]

I'm in. I'll try it. But the page isn't responding.

ttylinux is awesome, by the way. The world needs more minimalistic distros. And more Arch Linux screenshots. ;)

[agnes]

Gimme FullFat distro's any time. Ram is cheap, Quad Core is ubiquitous and we now usually measure HD space in TB's. I really don't see the need for any more light distro's.
For you, that's ok. But I think (generally speaking) probably in Africa and other economically challenged regions they would like a minimalistic distro. Not everyone can afford a modern PC.

Now, they may have cheap illegal XP versions on the markets in some of those regions. While XP will certainly run slower than this particular distro (I tried Gerbil in VB on P4), the XP may still work ok. But then, still: not all regions have those illegal CDs (usually they'll all have a painfully low bandwidth for illegal big iso downloads too); it can be a pain to get right drivers for old PCs sometimes; the whizzkid may want 'more'; and how long will those regions still be immune for anti-piracy laws.

I know this "Third World argument" might be old/cliche but I have the impression it still holds. Note I never went there, so if this was wrong please correct me :)

I like minimalist distros myself btw, just a preference.

--

Anyway, just wondering, do you (creator) have a goal in which manner Pipsqueak should be different from tty linux?

For "just tweaked" versions of distros (adding software, WM's, small config changes) I personally like the Puppy approach. They have puplets (derivatives), that are linked to at the main Puppy site. Plus, all the derivatives use "pup" in their name somewhere. Both things make you immediately know, "hey that uses the same core as Puppy / it's a derivative". ==> less cluttered view of distros.

[bendib]

Sorry about the server. The router was acting up. Should be working now. Limme know if it goes down again.

[bendib]

Anyway, just wondering, do you (creator) have a goal in which manner Pipsqueak should be different from tty linux?
Yes, I do. It should be more user friendly with more usable utilities, yet still remain relatively minimalistic. The development until 1.0 will be very choppy, with releases cranked out every day or so that took about ten minutes to make in the first place, kinda like what I am doing already. The server is working again now, just so you know, and I have released another version (Chewsticks) since I started the thread.

[bendib]

As a side note, if ttylinux is not perfect (and im sure it isnt), wouldnt it be better to cooperate with them and help make it perfect rather than spinning/forking ?

Its just a general observation I have that in the linux world we do this far too often and we have a gazillion distributions and very few that actually work and are maintained properly. 24 different video editors and none that is actually good. Would be nice if people cooperated more often rather than keep reinventing the wheel and making "their own" app/distro/whatever .If people working on pitivi, cinerella and kdenlive would bundle their forces, we might have had something rivaling premiere by now.

anyway, sorry for ranting :)
Ttylinux is maintained by what looks like one guy. I don't want to bug him by telling him how his distro should work. I am making a minimalistic distro how I think it should work here. Hopefully you people will like it, too.