6 ms·

I do not understand. When I have started on linux, 25 floppies were enough for a full installation (including latex and X) on my big HD (120MB). How a striped d

I do not understand. When I have started on linux, 25 floppies were enough for a full installation (including latex and X) on my big HD (120MB). How a striped down version of bash, coreutils&co and guile could require 120MB ?

asutekku 7y ago
There’s a bunch of more stuff available on it nowadays.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  And lots of hardware drivers, for lots of potential hardware I assume as well. I bet Gentoo could be setup to be entirely minimal by removing uneeded things from the distro, not sure if it's known for that.
secraetomani 7y ago
And a typical install of Windows 95 was 55 MB. Which included a bunch of images, sounds, ...
- oblio 7y ago
  > images 800x600 16 bit backgrounds and 16x16 16 bit icons... > sounds MIDI sounds... We're not living in 1995, anymore.
  - secraetomani 7y ago
    What, your C compiler includes high-definition image and audio files? What times to be alive...
    - oblio 7y ago
      He was comparing Win 95 to modern software. Also, as far as I know even stuff like compilers (if they want to support Unicode fully) have to pull in dependencies like ICU, which because of its symbol DB weighs about 30MB. That's another problem Win 95-era software didn't have to care about...
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        ICU is a problem of our own making. Computers worked with other languages all the time before Unicode. You could say the same for pretty much any modern dependency.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Weren't (the) BMPs large in size?
    - oblio 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure that even at that time compressed formats were used :-) JPG was released in 1992, GIF in 1987.
      - Fnoord 7y ago
        These were used, yes. I am pretty sure Windows in most of 90s used BMPs, e.g. for backgrounds and in MS Paint. [1] Also, GIF is no replacement for BMP. [1] https://www.fileformat.info/format/bmp/egff.htm https://www.fileformat.info/format/bmp/egff.htm
- folkrav 7y ago
  I'd be curious about comparing the resolution, color depth and compression levels of those images, and the bitrate/compression levels/codec of those sounds. Let's take one wallpaper. Win95 must have included a what, max 1024x768 wallpaper size? Assuming identical compression and color depths, that's still 786432 pixels total, compared to the 4K wallpapers we get today with 8294400 pixels - a larger than 10x increase. That's vastly oversimplifying, as a 10x pixel count doesn't directly translate to a 10x file size, but still, that's just for one image. Pretty sure sounds in Win95 were MIDI, which aren't even actual audio files.
  - secraetomani 7y ago
    We are comparing here a full graphical OS with kernel & drivers versus a bunch of command line tools. And no, Win95 did include real audio files (if small).
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      Don't make the mistake of assuming a GUI is automatically more complex or more advanced than command line tools.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  But crucially, it didn't ship any compiler chain capable of building itself; I know compilers were smaller then, but apples-apples...
swiley 7y ago
If it bothers you, try alpine. I think the minimal rootfs on their site is 3MB or so.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  Though the kernel itself might sit at ~60 MB (depending on compile-time options), and you might need to addd another 120MB for the firmware. Of course, this can be stripped down a lot if you decide to taylor the kernel to your system (less drivers, etc). To answer GP, a full texlive installation takes around 2GB on my system. That's mostly fonts, but also packages, tools and documentation. I take the bloat for convenience, because I can afford a few extra GBs nowadays. If you want to go for minimalism, you still can (and even reach smaller footprints than back then), but that's no longer the mainstream option. Not when a GB is a few cents.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Does Guix use the Linux kernel or Hurd? In any case, I can understand kernel growth. There are a lot of new drivers, new and old architectures (386 machines were supported in Linux until a few years back; and there's still a fork that does), all the new file systems, all the new networking and cgroup isolation. You can build a minimal kernel without a lot of that stuff, and it will still run on older embedded hardware. But just having a large kernel source and large default kernels/initrds isn't bloat so much as supporting a lot of hardware possibilities.
    - Sean1708 7y ago
      From here: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/guix.html#GNU-Distribution https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/guix.html#GNU-Distribution > Our goal is to provide a practical 100% free software distribution of Linux-based and other variants of GNU, with a focus on the promotion and tight integration of GNU components, and an emphasis on programs and tools that help users exert that freedom.
    - brirec 7y ago
      Not trying to sound snarky here: does _anything_ use Hurd?
sideeffffect 7y ago
I suspect that the big part of that 120MB is bootstrap-guile (Guile is a Scheme implementation) if you want to go really minimalistic, see stage0, it's like 500 Bytes https://github.com/oriansj/stage0 https://github.com/oriansj/stage0 details are in the article
- bArray 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on what stage0 does? I'm not sure I understand what it means by "bootstrap".
  - markjenkinswpg 7y ago
    Stage0's binary seed is a monitor, a program that lets you twiddle data in hex into memory addresses (in hex). Code injected into the monitor can do the next best thing, a similar program that loads text files with hex into binaries and skips ends of lines after a comment marker starts. As such, the initial stuff in the stage0 project is further programs that are still in my view blobs, but instead of binary blobs they're plain text hex blobs with comments documenting the assembler equivalent and what's going on. From there there are iterations of having hex files (hex 1 and hex2) with increasing complexity of symbol tables so references can be made to addresses and relative jumps by symbols. From there stage0 project makes the leap to "stage1" and there are things like basic editors, file concatenation tools, macro based assembler and so . It all ends with a C-subset (M2-planet) compiler written in assembler. Work is in progress to rewrite the scheme interpreter mes in M2-planet instead of normal C. The c compiler mescc (written in scheme) can build tcc and onward to gcc. There's bootstraps along these lines for a fantasy machine called knight and there's x86 versions and maybe some other archs in the works. My stalled side project is interpreting the knight stuff in python: https://github.com/markjenkins/knightpies https://github.com/markjenkins/knightpies I'm excited by the idea that I could use really old GNU/Linux distro CDs that I trust with python2.3+ as a bootstrap path and eventually with some other work even use old power macs with MacOS X that included python2.3+ as another cool place to bootstrap the free world.
- pera 7y ago
  That's likely the case: at least in Arch Linux, Guile+deps is about 50MB.
mhd 7y ago
| Bootstrapping in this context refers to how the distribution gets built from nothing. The GNU build system was huge since about forever.

asutekku 7y ago

There’s a bunch of more stuff available on it nowadays.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
And lots of hardware drivers, for lots of potential hardware I assume as well. I bet Gentoo could be setup to be entirely minimal by removing uneeded things from the distro, not sure if it's known for that.

secraetomani 7y ago

And a typical install of Windows 95 was 55 MB. Which included a bunch of images, sounds, ...

oblio 7y ago
> images 800x600 16 bit backgrounds and 16x16 16 bit icons... > sounds MIDI sounds... We're not living in 1995, anymore.
- secraetomani 7y ago
  What, your C compiler includes high-definition image and audio files? What times to be alive...
  - oblio 7y ago
    He was comparing Win 95 to modern software. Also, as far as I know even stuff like compilers (if they want to support Unicode fully) have to pull in dependencies like ICU, which because of its symbol DB weighs about 30MB. That's another problem Win 95-era software didn't have to care about...
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      ICU is a problem of our own making. Computers worked with other languages all the time before Unicode. You could say the same for pretty much any modern dependency.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Weren't (the) BMPs large in size?
  - oblio 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure that even at that time compressed formats were used :-) JPG was released in 1992, GIF in 1987.
    - Fnoord 7y ago
      These were used, yes. I am pretty sure Windows in most of 90s used BMPs, e.g. for backgrounds and in MS Paint. [1] Also, GIF is no replacement for BMP. [1] https://www.fileformat.info/format/bmp/egff.htm https://www.fileformat.info/format/bmp/egff.htm
folkrav 7y ago
I'd be curious about comparing the resolution, color depth and compression levels of those images, and the bitrate/compression levels/codec of those sounds. Let's take one wallpaper. Win95 must have included a what, max 1024x768 wallpaper size? Assuming identical compression and color depths, that's still 786432 pixels total, compared to the 4K wallpapers we get today with 8294400 pixels - a larger than 10x increase. That's vastly oversimplifying, as a 10x pixel count doesn't directly translate to a 10x file size, but still, that's just for one image. Pretty sure sounds in Win95 were MIDI, which aren't even actual audio files.
- secraetomani 7y ago
  We are comparing here a full graphical OS with kernel & drivers versus a bunch of command line tools. And no, Win95 did include real audio files (if small).
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Don't make the mistake of assuming a GUI is automatically more complex or more advanced than command line tools.
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
But crucially, it didn't ship any compiler chain capable of building itself; I know compilers were smaller then, but apples-apples...

swiley 7y ago

If it bothers you, try alpine. I think the minimal rootfs on their site is 3MB or so.

MayeulC 7y ago
Though the kernel itself might sit at ~60 MB (depending on compile-time options), and you might need to addd another 120MB for the firmware. Of course, this can be stripped down a lot if you decide to taylor the kernel to your system (less drivers, etc). To answer GP, a full texlive installation takes around 2GB on my system. That's mostly fonts, but also packages, tools and documentation. I take the bloat for convenience, because I can afford a few extra GBs nowadays. If you want to go for minimalism, you still can (and even reach smaller footprints than back then), but that's no longer the mainstream option. Not when a GB is a few cents.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Does Guix use the Linux kernel or Hurd? In any case, I can understand kernel growth. There are a lot of new drivers, new and old architectures (386 machines were supported in Linux until a few years back; and there's still a fork that does), all the new file systems, all the new networking and cgroup isolation. You can build a minimal kernel without a lot of that stuff, and it will still run on older embedded hardware. But just having a large kernel source and large default kernels/initrds isn't bloat so much as supporting a lot of hardware possibilities.
  - Sean1708 7y ago
    From here: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/guix.html#GNU-Distribution https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/guix.html#GNU-Distribution > Our goal is to provide a practical 100% free software distribution of Linux-based and other variants of GNU, with a focus on the promotion and tight integration of GNU components, and an emphasis on programs and tools that help users exert that freedom.
  - brirec 7y ago
    Not trying to sound snarky here: does _anything_ use Hurd?

sideeffffect 7y ago

I suspect that the big part of that 120MB is bootstrap-guile (Guile is a Scheme implementation) if you want to go really minimalistic, see stage0, it's like 500 Bytes https://github.com/oriansj/stage0 https://github.com/oriansj/stage0 details are in the article

bArray 7y ago
Can you elaborate on what stage0 does? I'm not sure I understand what it means by "bootstrap".
- markjenkinswpg 7y ago
  Stage0's binary seed is a monitor, a program that lets you twiddle data in hex into memory addresses (in hex). Code injected into the monitor can do the next best thing, a similar program that loads text files with hex into binaries and skips ends of lines after a comment marker starts. As such, the initial stuff in the stage0 project is further programs that are still in my view blobs, but instead of binary blobs they're plain text hex blobs with comments documenting the assembler equivalent and what's going on. From there there are iterations of having hex files (hex 1 and hex2) with increasing complexity of symbol tables so references can be made to addresses and relative jumps by symbols. From there stage0 project makes the leap to "stage1" and there are things like basic editors, file concatenation tools, macro based assembler and so . It all ends with a C-subset (M2-planet) compiler written in assembler. Work is in progress to rewrite the scheme interpreter mes in M2-planet instead of normal C. The c compiler mescc (written in scheme) can build tcc and onward to gcc. There's bootstraps along these lines for a fantasy machine called knight and there's x86 versions and maybe some other archs in the works. My stalled side project is interpreting the knight stuff in python: https://github.com/markjenkins/knightpies https://github.com/markjenkins/knightpies I'm excited by the idea that I could use really old GNU/Linux distro CDs that I trust with python2.3+ as a bootstrap path and eventually with some other work even use old power macs with MacOS X that included python2.3+ as another cool place to bootstrap the free world.
pera 7y ago
That's likely the case: at least in Arch Linux, Guile+deps is about 50MB.

mhd 7y ago

| Bootstrapping in this context refers to how the distribution gets built from nothing. The GNU build system was huge since about forever.