SliTaz Forum

Better Idea : Back Stepwise logic

(23 posts) (8 voices)

• Started 11 years ago by moulefrite
• Latest reply from moulefrite
• This topic is not a support question

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1. 

   moulefrite
   

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   Member

   Hi,

   I was just wondering why Slitaz shall fit into a zipped 35 MB if this cause many troubles when we face so different hardware.

   I just tried , to install a frugal Slitaz on the laptop of a friend and I was just upset to justify that if something doesn't work ( = out of the box) it's just because firm's are naughty capitalist, no open-source code, Slitaz is very small .. and bla bla bla .. and so on ..

   How can we convince someone to drop WinXP (or even Win7) if she cannot see the point to manage with something which "doesn't work" (her words). It has to never fail, often I feel the "Bill Win98 blue screen experience"

   My idea is to following Microsoft philosophy : the most compatible Slitaz ISO whatever the size. I prefer to bring a CD with 235 MB with some sexy stuff (firefox, flash,skype..) rather than trying a cool-nerd but hypothetical Web-Boot on a unknown wifi network with no drivers.

   So, It could be very interesting to have an ISO with full but with a clever option to strip-out all the unecessary modules,firmwares,softwares once we want to produce a personnal rootfs.gz (or iso) for a frugal install (backstep : from the most to the least)

   it isn't a good idea ?

   Posted 11 years ago #
2. 

   Trixar_za
   

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   Key Master

   The compression of the image has nothing to do with compatibity. If we remove it and make SliTaz fully featured it we'll be lucky if it fits into 235Mb. Think 1Gb+ like Linux Mint.

   I also won't download something that big. One of the reason I picked SliTaz is that I pay for by the Mb I use. 35Mb is cheap to download.

   As for you friend install just the base install of Windows 7 Starter, then ask her to play a DivX movie, change the Wallpaper, Write a Word Document or run more than 5 programs at once. Can't do it without getting Standard or Pro, Installing Office or a codec pack? Exactly. All OSes needs work to be useful.

   With that said, I like the idea of a fully featured Linux, but within reason. Puppy Linux is a good example of it can be done. It can't play flash movies out of the box, but you can play DivX movies. Actually with Puppy you can do all the things I mentioned that you can't with a base install of Win7 Starter. If we can do the same with SliTaz it would be great. But just know, even a fully featured out-of-the-box Linux will still not change the minds of some people.

   Posted 11 years ago #
3. 

   moulefrite
   

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   Member

   Dear Master of Univers,

   As usual, I hear the theory of the ones who refuse to try to see things other than their nerd's point of view. Bam! ;) Sorry for that, but do you forget that some people pay more than 1000€ just to have an unix system with a little half-rotten apple on it ? lol Why ? Because it "works" .. no no .. please no justification .. it "wooorks". They are not the majority ? You are right, almost everybody else just goes in a shop and ask to the vendor a computer with Win7 and they trust that will run " a DivX movie, change the Wallpaper, Write a Word Document or run more than 5 programs at once " Yes, because they will pay for that : 4GB , 1TB and a i3 and they won't "pay-a-shit" to know if the DivX is actually an Xvid, WM9 , Theora or whatever : it's a movie on a CD , so a DivX. Don't blame me, it's not my fault

   I think Slitaz is extraordinary because it runs on RAM and very efficient, I just said that too many times I cannot "convert" a WinXP guy to Slitaz just because they's too many times just a little thing which brings them to think that they should rather stay on their good old WinXP.

   So give you opinion on this : why not delivery the most operational flavor ISO on a CD with a nice little script (with GUI to delete some applications) which will run before the writeiso and delete all the unecessary to reduce the image to something like 150MB. Exactly, the opposite of the casual way of starting from few to something bigger. Do you understand ?

   Kind regards

   Posted 11 years ago #
4. 

   Trixar_za
   

   offline

   Key Master

   Because that means we lose to Puppy and TinyCore in the race to be the smallest and because it uses more RAM the more programs you add. Do you know how many current space we have left before it can't be run on a system with 256Mb RAM? About 32Mb. 40Mb if you're lucky. That's not a lot of space to push applications, codecs, unused video, modem, sound, device and wifi drivers. Even if we remove the compression you'll STILL have this problem. Get it? It's not the compression. It's how we set the boot parameters and the multi-boot system.

   To even have a remote chance of this working we need to reduce build sizes of the programs. Keep them them functional while reducing their compiled size. Using something like musl, we can reduce most of those by ~40%. What does that mean? It means we can add 40% more stuff in the same space as the current iso without bloating it. Sound good? Of course it does. Or we can throw out what isn't broke like you suggest and bloat the hell out of the iso so it needs atleast a system with 1Gb of RAM to run. I think my way is better personally.

   Also FYI Windows 7 can't play a DivX, Xvid or ogv movie out of the box. Windows XP can't even play wmv9 videos. So much or that comparison against Linux...

   Posted 11 years ago #
5. 

   Aleksej
   

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   Coder-hobbyist

   Stop holy war, moulefrite

   Everyone have his mention. The clue is that SliTaz already gives you all you want.

   You want exclusive iso with all the stuff you need? Create your own flavor.

   You need GUI to uninstall some packages? Take a look at TazPanel - Packages.

   If you really want it...

   Posted 11 years ago #
6. 

   gibor
   

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   Moderator

   It is not a holy war, it's only disagreement with the decision not to do so.
   IMHO SliTaz is appreciated for speed of execution, the fact that it is distributed in the basic version with 35Mb, has a relative importance only for resonance effect.
   That install all your favorite programs, it is a sure thing is quite clear that no one is satisfied with the out of the box.
   Have available an iso with installed programs to a larger circulation, it would be useful for those who have no time is the ability to do it in a second time, not to mention that it would reduce forum post expressing concerns about trivial things, I think it would therefore be a competitive choice and completion.

   Posted 11 years ago #
7. 

   gdesilva
   

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   Member

   I stumbled across Slitaz because I was looking around for an OS to get to work on my old PCs. Could not get them to do anything with Windows. Ubuntu, sort of worked but was still slow. Puppy was OK but did not have the look and feel of a modern OS. That's my experience and I'd rather stay with the current Slitaz ideology rather than trying to make it fit everyone's needs.

   If people want to move away from Windows there are plenty of options and if they do not want, nothing in the world is going to make them migrate away from Windows. Three of my friends took a great liking and are using Slitaz but one just could not be bothered and is a 'happy' Vitsa customer (if there is anyone one called a happy Vista user!) and no, I am not a 'nerd'!

   For whatever its worth, my opinion is that Slitaz has a niche market and it would do well to nurture and PLAY WELL in that market. Irrespective of how good Slitaz becomes in the eyes of millions of IT users Windows is simply not going to go away in a hurry :-)

   Posted 11 years ago #
8. 

   Aleksej
   

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   Coder-hobbyist

   Well, you not need to ask SliTaz' devs to implement it, you can do it yourself (DIY), anytime, anyway.

   You can create

   • SliTaz-office;
   • SliTaz-power-media-box;
   • SliTaz-artist-workshop;
   • SliTaz-[online]-gamer-box;
   • SliTaz-for-kids;
   • SliTaz-for-developers;
   • or any combination of mentioned above, or anything else...

   You can share your flavor with your friends and/or with the rest of world.

   You need to know one little thing: SliTaz designed to be light and fast. SliTaz spider is friendly fast small creature ;) But what happen if you load it with tons of soft? :D

   You are welcomed!

   • pizza.slitaz.org
   • pizza.slitaz.me

   Posted 11 years ago #
9. 

   moulefrite
   

   offline

   Member

   Trixar,

   I suspect you not willing to understand want I'm trying to advocat.

   It's not because Slitaz is good in task "A" that it cannot be good doing task "B" .

   I just said that a good full nomad 700MB CD (loram-cdrom) with the maximum to match
   * hardware max compatibility (scripts to detect & launch right drivers before X)
   * max software popularity (and max graphical coherence)
   In modern world, 700MB is downloaded in a eye blink you know

   You know, just a kind of "sexy" Slitaz CD you can bring to your friends with no fear to live a "Bill-gates-blue-screen-experience" .
   And once they like it, do GUI to check JUST the needs before launching the writeiso command (in aim to produce a frugal install beside windows or on a USB)

   How can we convince people to move to Slitaz if you take 5 hours to produce an adapted
   one to the computer and, at the end, you notice that the touchpad doesn't work anymore
   because you used the mouse from the beginning to the end ?

   Posted 11 years ago #
10. 

    moulefrite
    

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    Member

    @Aleksej

    You & Co are precisely more suited to produce the right ISO for that :

    1* The best Slitaz (in a marketing view)
    2* Something new (little application with GUI) which can reduce-fit the iso only to computer hardware and software needs
    -> Backstep logical

    I think that should be the best step to slitaz to improve it's popularity

    cheers

    Posted 11 years ago #
11. 

    Aleksej
    

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    Coder-hobbyist

    Hi moulefrite,

    You should be interested developers to set aside their current work and started doing your work.

    Or DIY...

    To quote one known person:

    Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

    Posted 11 years ago #
12. 

    Bellard
    

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    Key Master

    Hi moulefrite,

    SliTaz is now a 4in1 flavor. Can you show us the 5th layer on http://pizza.slitaz.me/ ?
    i.e. create your flavor based on core - feel free to create the missing packages.

    Posted 11 years ago #
13. 

    nitrogen_widget
    

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    Member

    If I wanted to download a 700mb CD i'd just go to a major distro & get that.

    Posted 11 years ago #
14. 

    Trixar_za
    

    offline

    Key Master

    I'm with Nitrogen. I picked SliTaz because it's small and it doesn't take 5 hours for me to get my system ready. Maybe an hour and 150Mb of downloaded packages to get a complete system. But I'm an expert - so it's expected.

    I assume you mean a 700Mb loram-ram iso because a compressed version will need about 3Gb of RAM to run the LiveCD and will take a full day to compress. Even then you'll have to find 560Mb of junk to fill the image.

    But let's get serious. You want to turn SliTaz into every other Linux remix by stripping from it everything that makes it unique. You want to make it physically bigger by throwing away a perfectly working compression system too. Having an out-of-the-box system is good idea, but you're doing it completely the wrong way. Puppy should be the baseline. Not Linux Mint. End of Story.

    Posted 11 years ago #
15. 

    gibor
    

    offline

    Moderator

    Only explain my point of view.
    It should not be executable live a full installation, and you can not even think of a system to the puppy.
    You should create a live intelligent that supports only the installation of a large rootfs to be extracted on hd, after removing any unnecessary.
    The thing I think is done so with great distro ... maybe I'm wrong.
    In this case en pizza company is a useless toy, then do those who believe in me does not change anything.
    good job.

    Posted 11 years ago #

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