[Coco] OT Linux question

[Frank Swygert]

Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:27:32 -0400
From: Louis Ciotti<lciotti1 at gmail.com>

<snip>
Initially one of my draws to Linux was that fact it was not overly
bloated.  It has lost that now with each major needing at a minimum
somewhere around 100mb just for the install media.  My first introduction
to linux fit onto a hand full of floppy disks, and I used on a headless 486
to act as a router to share my internet connection, this was before routers
before those became cheap throw away boxes. It ran flawlessly for 5 years,
the last 3 months the hard drive failed and I had no idea, it just kept
running until the power failed.  That worked with noting but a CLI.  Now a
minimal linux distribution for a CLI only interface would never fit on a
small mound of floppies.  It seems to me somewhere the idea of tight
efficient code got lost, but this is coming from someone who has only
dabbled in writing software code, maybe I am wrong on that.

========================

There are several small Linux distros that don't take many resources to run and are mainly targeted at compact installations and/or older hardware. DSL (Damn Small Linux) is one, Puppy Linux is another. Search for "small linux distros" and more will come up.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
www.amc-mag.com