in reply to custom linux for embedded system with Perl

Half a gig of RAM isn't all that small, the laptop I used in 2007 had similar characteristics. And Debian Sarge and Etch worked fine on it, even with a GUI.

So I think a good first step would be to start with a minimal installation of your favorite Linux distribution, and only resort to "extra slim" alternatives if the need arises. If it does, Damn Small Linux might be worth looking at, though I don't know how well it is suited for server applications.

Perl 6 - second systems done right
  • Comment on Re: custom linux for embedded system with Perl

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: custom linux for embedded system with Perl
by morgon (Priest) on Dec 29, 2010 at 10:06 UTC
    I am not worried at all about the RAM size.

    But I need to build a whole system that does not consume more than 32GB of disk space and that I think will take some tinkering which is why I thought that maybe starting with source-based distros would be easier than trying to slim down Debian.

    As I find such things not that fascinating I'd rather avoid going down too many blind alleys...

[reply]

      My Mandriva desktop from which I'm typing this has about 9.5 gigs in /home (data and some programs) and about 9.5 gigs in the rest of the system.

      In that 9.5 gigs I have lots of things installed. That includes 3D games. I have multiple database systems installed. There are two office suites. I have many graphics, audio, video, and animation editing packages installed. I keep around about a dozen different web browsers for testing. There's a mail server, a web server, an SSH server, and a DNS server. There are (at least) three perl installations on the system right now. There are at least six versions of the JRE installed. WINE and DOSBox are on there, along with some software written for Windows (the DOS "drive" mounts from my home directory though). Then there's all the logs, spools, docs, and other non-program data that's in the system.

      If you're having trouble fitting a Linux distribution, your code, and your data onto 32 gigs of space, then there's something very wrong or your code and data are very large.

[reply]

      With 32 GB to play with this wont be a problem. You could easily create a proof of concept build containing everything you need using the Debian netinst CD within Virtualbox (or similar product).

[reply]

      32 GB disk space is quite a lot, too. For what you want to do, a Debian base install plus the few extra packages you need should not require more than 2-5 GB.

[reply]
      But I need to build a whole system that does not consume more than 32GB of disk space and that I think will take some tinkering

      Not at all. My non-minimalistic Debian installation takes 11GB, which includes all latex packages (quite a lot), a graphical environment, apache2, postgresql, a news spool, an office suite and so on.

      I don't use the distributions like SuSE or RedHat, but I'm pretty sure that even they will fit nicely onto 32GB hard disc.

      Perl 6 - second systems done right
[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom