[plug] Re: Members' ages-meetings- dist wars

[David Buddrige]

Mark Saxon wrote:

> My only experience with Linux is via popular
> vendor or distribution on CD or floppy disk.  Is it still possible to 
>build a stable system from scratch and how?  Are there any books or 
>postings that any one knows of that cover this?

Probaby best going through the HOWTO's and FAQ's in detail... it is a
reasonably non-trivial process as I understand, but certainly possible.
(how else were the distro's put together).. ;-)

The whole reason for Distro's is precisely because it's such a pain to
download and configure the whole thing bit by agonising bit.

However, if you want to get a good (bare-bones) distro, slackware is a
preety good way to start... I've got 3.1 if you wanted a copy - I can
arrange to have it copied for the price of the media if u like (my
brother's got a cd-writer)... it's probably the best in terms of getting
into the guts of it all... the install program is just a BASH script -
so you could read through the code to see how it's loading the various
items... 8-)

I've loaded my faithful slackware onto a bunch of low-end machins,
including one 386 with 4mb RAM and 100mb hard-drive (no CD - I did it
via floppy!) , and another 486SX 25 that had a < 200mb hard-drive and 8
mb ram.  Runs a treat.  8-)  It (slackware 3.1) has X as well, but
usually when I'm using it, it's cause I've not the RAM or hard-drive for
it... (Need min 8mb + about 300mb hard-drive to be sure of getting X
on.)

cheers

Dave.
> 
> The later Kernels and distributions seem to be requiring more and more
> memory and faster machines to run successfully. At least with X.
> 
> If some of the group are keen to build and supply systems to needy or
> special groups ( I would be interested in doing something like this in my
> area) this would seem to be an issue? maybe?