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Small linux distro
Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:32 am
by lukem95
what distro would you recommend for an old laptop, im just gonna use it to build a cross compiler basically, so GCC toolchain as standard, fast, and small.
i was considering DSL, but iv heard mixed reviews, anybody use a distro that fits this description?
~ lukem95
oh and btw.. cos this could save me a lot of effort, can i tell GCC via command line to produce executables with no links to the OS library (aka.. can be used on my OS). And the default linux app is ELF right?
thanks
Your best bet is ...
Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:55 am
by DeletedAccount
Hi ,
Your best bet is to create a linux distro from scratch using uClibc and busybox ... But this is a frustrating thing to do ... i had made my own distro this way and it took a lot time ... I complied gcc -4.0 on my AMD -k6 500 Mhz with 64 mb of ram and it took an entire night + some hours to compile ... But it obvoiusly was less of a pain using my AMD Sempron 64-bit with 256 mb ram .. But with this machine also took some time ..so you should be very patient .. its gona take a loooong time ... Other distos worth checking out are
1) MuLinux
2) Vector Linux
3) Puppy Linux
4) Damn Small Linux
5) linuxfromscrath.org
6) BlueFlops
7) I-diskXwin -- (single floppy X - Window Distribution )
Tiny Linux
9) Slackware Linux (try some older versions )
10) Try remastering Knoppix to get the desired distro ...(do some googling)
It is always better to use Slackware like distros (Hats off to Peter Volderkering) than debian like distros (My personal Opinion) .. At one stage of my life testing new linux distros was my hobby .. I have checked out more than 40 linux distros and eventually destroyed my hard-disk ... In my opinion Slackware is the winner and all the others are crap ...
Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 12:27 pm
by xyzzy
No it's not the best bet for an old laptop... A binary distro would be far better suited for it. Debian is good for old machines, IMO, and has a decent toolchain as standard. Slackware is also good but a little outdated and the package management is awful.
With regard to making binaries for your OS with it, for that you can either add a new target to GCC (for your OS) and build a cross-compiler, which is what I do, or use gcc to generate object files and link them with ld and a seperate ld script for your OS.