• Registered: 2012-01-02
  • Posts: 4

Topic: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

Hi at all,
usually on a Desktop PC with usual harddisk installation I prefer now Crunchbang, however I want to start a little course where I need maybe something different:
I'd like start a small electronics and programming course at our institute which also should promote Linux at the end. I basically want to have some operational amplifiers plugged to an microcontroller (PIC, Atmega, MSP430 i don't care) goes to the usb controller and the some computer (probably only laptops which the participants have to bring; unfortunately).  So we need to program the microcontroller think about feedback resistors our signals we want to measure and write a tiny Linux driver and finally make a cute C++ console programm or use Scilab+Scicos to actually measure some data.

So now I'd like to have a Linux Distro:

  • which runs smoothly from USB pendrive

  • is lightweight; which basically means supports old hardware, only uses a fraction of the available RAM and finally, low graphics settings possible etc.

  • small installation size: leaves more space for recordings on the pendrive

  • has an easy (STANDRARD) way to use a custom Kernel (e.g. RealTime, RTAI, Comedi) which basically means NO aufs NO squashfs and so on

I tried already:
Puppy Linux - Great Distro! But it seems that all Puppy Linux Users are somehow satisfied with their out of the box installation and DO not play with the Kernel. After some forum discussions we all agreed I don't need Puppy.

SLAX - *Hm* it has KDE by default *Hm* what should I say more; but for NEW Linux Users it might look very NICE and so I gave it a try. However it seems that its also based on aufs and needs a lot of workaround to get a custom Kernel running.

TinyCore - looks nice but I don't know anything about

Archbang - nice idea but I stick to Crunchbang if I would be asked.

and finally Crunchbang which I like very much but is maybe a bit large? No? Maybe?
I am just not quite sure if there isn't maybe something which is actually made for small harddisks, Pendrives which I should prefer to Crunchbang.

I am looking forward for your advice!
Thank you and all the best,  big_smile
glycyclalanin

  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,235

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

i'm not that knowledgeable about different distros but i've heard good things about antiX, which promises to be fast and lightweight. you might want to check that out.

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  • pvsage
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  • Registered: 2009-10-18
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Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

Have you tried SliTaz?

glycylalanin wrote:

and finally Crunchbang which I like very much but is maybe a bit large? No? Maybe?
I am just not quite sure if there isn't maybe something which is actually made for small harddisks, Pendrives which I should prefer to Crunchbang.

Remember that a big chunk of the CrunchBang live image is support for lots of different hardware; if you look through the introductions area, you'll see a common theme of "CrunchBang was the only distro where everything on my ancient/brand-new/Frankenstein computer worked "out of the box"!" - how often do you hear this about any other distro?

As for the size of the live image, it's actually kinda hard to find a thumb drive smaller than 4GB these days, and that's enough for about 5 Live USB images similar to CrunchBang.

If you want to keep searching for some other distros to try, NewCityVegas posted a couple threads about creating multiboot thumb drives here and here.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,235

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

^ pvsage is very right there.

you could, of course, also just go with Arch. set it up any way you like it.

bash :: @script :: system :: fclean
  • Registered: 2012-01-02
  • Posts: 4

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

Thanks alot for your replies!
@rhowaldt: yes indeed I already had a look to antiX however the live distro also has ~700 MB and therefore I would stick with Crunchbang.
Arch is od course very custom wink i tried it once and struggeld for several days only to get openbox to work ... so I think i am basically cured regarding Arch big_smile

@pvsage: righty right, crunchbang indeed has a very good hardware support but I can support the 'everything works out of the box' claim only for the current version, while Puppy up to now never had any troubles with my hardware too. However it has serious limitations ( mostly my lack of expertise with aufs) with custom kernels and package management e.g. resolving dependencies. But your're definitely right with the pendrive size! The only problem with crunchbang and pendrives is the more or less lacking good HowTo for installing it persistently on a pendrive. I'll gonna try ugh's solution now. Would be nice if the Crunchbang Live Session would have something like Puppy Linux - some clicks and done. And ... i'll try slitaz immediately wink


Thank You!
glycylalanin

  • pvsage
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  • Registered: 2009-10-18
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Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

You're right about the persistence issue - there are quite a few how-to's on this subject in the CrunchBang forums, but they're like noses.  ("Everyone has one, and they're all different" is the clean version...)

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • Registered: 2011-11-22
  • Posts: 1,317

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

glycylalanin wrote:

TinyCore - looks nice but I don't know anything about

Why have you not investigated this? I also don't know anything about TinyCore, but they say it is

... a nomadic ultra small graphical desktop operating system capable of booting from cdrom, pendrive, or frugally from a hard drive. The desktop boots extremely fast and is able to support additional applications and hardware of the users choice. While Tiny Core always resides in ram, additional applications extensions can either reside in ram, mounted from a persistent storage device, or installed into a persistent storage device.

sounds like just what you're looking for...

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-01-28 19:03:36)

  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,867

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

glycylalanin wrote:

Thanks alot for your replies!
@rhowaldt: yes indeed I already had a look to antiX however the live distro also has ~700 MB and therefore I would stick with Crunchbang.

There's antix core, which is 250 MB or something.

LVM | Catalyst | Wireless
  • From: 127.0.0.1
  • Registered: 2010-07-02
  • Posts: 1,274

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

Slitaz is a pretty amazing distro imo, especially for running from a pen drive. If you want to add a custom kernel to a debian based distro (like crunchbang), check out remastersys. It takes a running system and makes a live system out of it. So you can just install whatever kernel you want while running it from a hard drive, and then create a live image that you can put on a USB stick.

  • pvsage
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Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

^ You can also do this with the Debian Live project.  Don't know about custom kernel support in Debian Live though, and last I checked (a couple years ago?) remastersys specifically stated on its website that custom kernels were unsupported.  I think this was actually repeated in bold text for emphasis.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • Registered: 2011-09-03
  • Posts: 97

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

TinyCore Linux

The base installation is 11.5MB big.

But all you get is the VERY basic things.

When you download a piece of software, you get 2 options when it comes to installing it. One version is "OnDemand" where you run it when you need to run it (the program). The other option is "OnBoot", meaning that when the Distro boots up, it will also load up that program.

This is all about cutting down on the usage of resources.

To be honest, I'm sure once you got used to how things were done, and installed exactly what you wanted on it, it would be alright. Though, I bet if it came to something really specific like what you were looking for, it would be more difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.

~ ~  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Another idea is simply using another storage medium for your files and folders? What ever happened to burning your stuff to a CD? Kind of impractical really, but it would mean always having a backup of your things if you lost the disk; They are pretty cheap these days if you just buy them in bulk (on a pole thing with no individual cases); You'd only be carrying around 1 at a time (which you could just get a case for and re-use that case).

CDs are our forgotten friends. sad

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  • From: 127.0.0.1
  • Registered: 2010-07-02
  • Posts: 1,274

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

pvsage wrote:

^ You can also do this with the Debian Live project.  Don't know about custom kernel support in Debian Live though, and last I checked (a couple years ago?) remastersys specifically stated on its website that custom kernels were unsupported.  I think this was actually repeated in bold text for emphasis.

From the remastersys information page:

If your kernel doesn't have the squashfs-modules and either the aufs-modules or unionfs-modules, you MUST use a different kernel.  No ifs ands or buts about it.

So you just have to make sure those modules are installed and loaded into memory at boot time. AVLinux uses custom kernels and has been assembled with remastersys since day 1. Debian Live probably works too. Point being though, if you boot a distro from a live USB, and try and install a custom kernel to the live USB while it's running from said usb stick, you're probably not going to have much success.  I'm not sure how unetbootin installs handle this, but I know that my persistent sticks I create with LiLi won't allow me to write to initramfs, initrd.img, vmlinuz, etc.

  • Registered: 2011-10-14
  • Posts: 141

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

Lubuntu?

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  • ethrg
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  • Registered: 2012-01-30
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Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

As much as I hate to say it, your project sounds like one of those your likely to have to do a big chunk of work on yourself. There's a great many distributions out there, and many flavors of each distribution, but it doesn't mean you'll ever find just what your looking for. Unless you feel up to starting with one of the older floppy-based tools and building it up to a full-on pendrive platform yourself, the best you can do to get just what your after is to start with one of the popular live-instalation media distributions like Ubuntu, Mint, #!, Slax, or Puppy, heck even Gentoo if you can count on everyone having a DVD drive.

Personally I'd take a recent image of Puppy and drop in a more friendly kernel with the respective framework for very broad support on my development box, and use that to build a new live image to meet my needs. Depending on your aims though you might want to seriously consider starting off with something from NetBSD, it's not Linux, but theres a reason so many evaluation boards run NetBSD.

And as for #! being a bit large, well, I can't even find a flashdrive under 1GB on the shelves these days. I hope I helped in some small way.

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  • Registered: 2012-01-02
  • Posts: 4

Re: Please help me: Which Linux will I need?

Thank You all for the vivid discussion!
With TinyCorePlus I had bad experiences simply that the downloaded *.iso* just didn't boot, but I already had trouble with Ubuntu 10.04  due to the strange chipset used on my Fujitsu Siemens Futro Thin Client.
SliTaz is indeed very attractive and if worse comes to worst this will the distro of choice.

I tried no several times with the crunchbang text installer to install it onto a pendrive and I have to say that it would be reall really nice if one could tell in the GRUB install 'Please install to the MBR of sdb whatever but NOT to sda!!! wink I guess it would work but it's definitly nothing which works out of the box.

@ethrg: It seems that you know how to compile a custom puppy kernel right? I'd honestly love to learn that!


EDIT: I just tried Lubuntu and it installed without ANY problems to the USB drive. Everything works out of the box BUT of course I have to deal with 2.4 GB only for the OS and Grub2.



All the best,
glycylalanin

Last edited by glycylalanin (2012-02-01 10:23:43)