BLUEFLOPS: a two-floppy Linux with 2.6.14.2 kernel

[Raman]

After polling my small scientific community, I can confidently report that Puppy is the hands-down best small Linux distribution bar none, and perhaps the best Linux distribution for general use currently resident on the planet. And yet, the best (Puppy) just keeps getting better, about every two weeks or so.

But note also that several very close Puppy derivatives like Grafpup are greatly expanding the usefulness of Puppy Linux, and do so at a breathtaking pace. Arguably, Grafpup expands the reach and overall usefulness of Puppy Linux in a way that suggests that the wagging tail really does move the dog, or pup. http://www.grafpup.com/

However, having said that, for many folks a two-floppy BLUEFLOPS would be a worthy addition to their Puppy toolbox, especially on ancient toasters without CD-ROM drives, like many of my mine, and especially in emergency situations where nothing else works. And besides, BLUEFLOPS is useful for surprising your friends with the fact that just a little Linux can do so much. As in a tiny little 8mm CD Puppy: ("That little puppy can do all THAT?" As in a tiny little two-floppy BLUEFLOPS: "That little two-floppy thing can do all THAT?". To wit:

BLUEFLOPS is a two floppy Linux distribution with a graphical web browser ("links" using svgalib) and an IRC client (rhapsody).

http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/?q=node/1

Download at: http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/?q=node/3

The Linux kernel version is 2.6.14.2 with almost all of the Ethernet drivers and PPP support (for dial-up connections).

The C library is uClibc-0.9.26, busybox-1.1.0-pre1 is slightly modified, the kernel image is compressed with UPX-1.93.

You will be able to use HTTPS thanks to OpenSSL.

One of the neat features is the configuration procedure. The scripts are all accessible by a 'setup' script, and have a nice 'dialog' front-end. Once the setup is completed the configuration can be saved, loaded, erased, it's name changed (you get the picture...).

Minimum requirements:

-i386 processor
-16 MB RAM (OK, you can use it with 8 megs and swap space if you're desperate)

Please note that I have made this release of Blueflops work on the Internet with 4 MB RAM and swap space, which happily Blueflops will set up for you, and all this on a machine without a CD-ROM drive but with 3.5

[jcagle]

QNX used to offer a free version of their OS that ran on one floppy. It had a web browser and some other tools. It was really good and really fast, especially on my old 100 mhz machine and for an OS running from a floppy. It ran much faster than Windows, definitely. It was probably even faster than Puppy.

QNX is a UNIX type OS, but not a Linux distro. They offer an evaluation version now.

[Raman]

I have used QNX 6.3 extensively on a variety of older computers and find that if QNX works at all, that QNX 6.3 is never slow, is heavily hardware dependant -- which is to say QNX 6.3 works on some hardware and not on other hardware -- which in turn is to say, QNX 6.3 has not kept up with video, disk, motherboard, and other hardware developments, and finally, that QNX 6.3 is very interesting for UNIX developers, now that the QNX OpenSource community appears to be alive once more.

QNX is a "true" UNIX. But then, most folks think the same about Linux.

QNX 6.3 may be downloaded here:

http://www.openqnx.com/downloads/7za429 ... 30.tar.bz2

Hail Puppy!

Raman

[jcagle]

Yeah, QNX is very hardware dependant.

When I was at Johnston Community College, we experimented with it. While it worked great on my 100 mhz machine with a dial-up modem, it would not detect the network cards at the school.