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X Window System on a Floppy
- throw0101a 5y agoBack in the day QNX used to have advertisements about having the entire OS and a GUI on a 1.44 MB disk: * https://crackberry.com/heres-how-qnx-looked-1999-running-144mb-floppy https://crackberry.com/heres-how-qnx-looked-1999-running-144... * http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html
- fouc 5y agoQNX had a Photon microGUI that is probably superior to X windows (Wayland). It's a shame it never got fully open sourced.
- AceJohnny2 5y agoWhat is QNX's business model nowadays? I understand Ford Sync3 is based on it, but are there other consumer-visible products based on it?
- detaro 5y agoMany other car brands (often just the instrument cluster though). Otherwise probably not much consumer stuff, way more industrial/medical/infrastructure fields.
- nateguchi 5y agoBMW’s iDrive (used in all their production cars since around 2011) uses it
- biggieshellz 5y agoUntil recently, Cisco's IOS-XR was based on the QNX microkernel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS_XR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS_XR
- bluedino 5y ago195 million vehicles, and "We are the embedded OS of choice for ventilators, train controls, factory automation systems, medical robots and more."
- kalleboo 5y agoThe navigation/entertainment unit on our Suzuki uses it (I pulled apart the firmware update out of curiosity)
- danachow 5y agoWayland is not related to the X Window System, it is a ground up redesign. And while Microgui is nice it purposely isn’t directly comparable to a compositing window manager.
- sigzero 5y agoI ran that! It was actually really good.
- yesbabyyes 5y agoI used to have such a floppy. It was mindblowing, even though at the time 2 floppies would be enough to bootstrap a Debian install (if you had a common network card, the drivers of which were included). Debian would just show the old curses-like installer, and pull the rest of the system from the repo, while QNX had a full GUI, network card/modem drivers, and a friggin web browser in 1.44 MB.
- gregsadetsky 5y agoThat browser (which can be seen on the page linked by GP) is astounding for its size. Out of curiosity, what are currently the most minimal, "graphic" (i.e. not Links-like), browsers available today? Any Open Source ones?
- marcodiego 5y agoI loved Dillo but its development seems stuck. As a replacement I use netsurf.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoProbably NetSurf. https://www.netsurf-browser.org https://www.netsurf-browser.org
- gregsadetsky 5y agoNetSurf's great, thank you! I'd be curious to try porting it to another "frontend" i.e. OS/device. I don't know how difficult that would be. The development documentation seems good: http://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/docs http://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/docs
- badsectoracula 5y agoNetSurf is a great project, since unlike Dillo (another minimal web browser) it can handle a lot of sites out there while requiring very few resources. I use it often on a Raspberry Pi 2 i have next to me together with Dillo, but Dillo really only works with very very simple sites and mainly use it for reading HTML-based documentation.
- drewzero1 5y agoQNX, Floppix (2 diskettes)[0], MenuetOS[1], and Kolibri[2] were all very exciting to me in the early '00s. Eventually I got a USB drive (128MB!) and more or less gave up on the floppy life, but I do still appreciate the idea of running froim a floppy. [0] https://www.floppix.com/ https://www.floppix.com/ [1] http://menuetos.net/ http://menuetos.net/ [2] http://www.kolibrios.org/en/ http://www.kolibrios.org/en/
- tcbawo 5y agoI understand the appeal of radical portability that a floppy-based OS gives you, but the fragility of floppy disk media is something I don't miss!
- tablespoon 5y ago> I understand the appeal of radical portability that a floppy-based OS gives you, but the fragility of floppy disk media is something I don't miss! I also like the idea that the media doesn't contain a computer that could be programmed to do something nefarious that you don't expect. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/heres-a-list-of-29-different-types-of-usb-attacks/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/heres-a-list-...
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> I also like the idea that the media doesn't contain a computer that could be programmed to do something nefarious that you don't expect. It's entirely possible for a floppy-disk to be an attack-vector. After all, viruses were a thing in DOS days and they spread via floppy disks: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/definition/boot-sector-virus https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/definition/boot... But a modern Trojan-horse style computer-hidden-inside-an-innocuous-looking-peripheral in a floppy disk should be possible, considering what Sony fit into a floppy-disk's dimensions back in 2000: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica_FD95 http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica_FD95
- 5y ago
- wslh 5y agoWith a friend and stimulated by the QNX demo we ported a Squeak Smalltalk graphical environment to one 1.44mb disk: http://swain.webframe.org/squeak/floppy/ http://swain.webframe.org/squeak/floppy/ Basically we use a base Linux and modified Squeak to use SVGAlib instead of X-Windows. Later on some friends created a whole OS in Squeak (e.g. you could browse the TCP/IP protocol as a class in Smalltalk): https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762 https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762
- ta988 5y agoStill existing and getting developed: http://squeaknos.blogspot.com/?m=1 http://squeaknos.blogspot.com/?m=1
- jonjacky 5y agoThe nopsys/CogNOS project is more recent (commits in 2018): "CogNOS is actually a third iteration of the orginal SqueakNOS project ..." https://github.com/nopsys/CogNOS https://github.com/nopsys/CogNOS There is a conference paper about it, also from 2018: https://charig.github.io/assets/papers/SCDE-DLS.pdf https://charig.github.io/assets/papers/SCDE-DLS.pdf
- jrootabega 5y agoIn the mid-2000s I was using a nice single-floppy router distribution called freesco. I thought it worked pretty well, but I didn't put it under any stress. I don't know if the project still has the same soul as it did then, but here it is: https://www.freesco.org/ https://www.freesco.org/
- bluedino 5y agoI found a small Pentium 100MHz desktop in the trash back then, stuck a spare pair of 3com NICs in it, and loaded up Turbolinux that I got with a Linux magazine. Followed the Linux IP Masquerade HOWTO (http://www.e-infomax.com/ipmasq/howto/m-html/ipmasq-HOWTO-m.html http://www.e-infomax.com/ipmasq/howto/m-html/ipmasq-HOWTO-m....), and I soon had it running the network in my apartment building with a cable modem and 100mb SMC hub (also from a dumpster) A couple weeks later I came home to find the internet "not working", it got hacked (I never applied updates), and I replaced it with Freesco and never looked back.
- gattilorenz 5y agoI had to click the link to find out it's not FreeSCO (i.e. Not a free version of SCO Unix), which would have been quite... surprising. Buried deep into SCO's FTP server there still is a bootable single-floppy demo of SCO OpenServer intended for POS devices or so, but it's lacking any kind of GUI and most command line utilities...
- gattilorenz 5y agonot even that deep: ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/pos/demo/demofloppy
- jrootabega 5y agoYeah, I seem to remember there being a steady amount of confusion over that at all times. I think it was supposed to be "free Cisco."
- robotresearcher 5y agoThe original Macintosh was 64KB of ROM plus a 400KB floppy. Snug.
- fogihujy 5y agoYeah, even if you include the stuff in ROM, Macs and Amigas had full GUI environments using much less space back in the 80's. With that in mind, having an antique version of X running from a floppy isn't that impressive. It's still really cool though. :D
- unwind 5y agoThis might be nitpicking, but I feel this is the proper site for it: the name of the system is "X Window System". There is no "X Windows", "X-Windows" or such. See the Wikipedia section [1] on nomenclature for details. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#Nomenclature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#Nomenclature
- beervirus 5y agoPicking nits is fine, but this seems like an irrelevant nit. Like I at least get the argument about calling Linux GNU/Linux, even if I don’t care… but this one, I’m not sure why anyone would care.
- pgtan 5y agoI for myself get annoyed every time I see this misspell. The name is X Window. Even microserfs can learn it.
- beervirus 5y ago>microserfs Cringing intensifies.
- DonHopkins 5y ago1. Thank you for getting annoyed every time. 2. The name is not "X Window". Citation: See the June 1988 "XNextEvent" newsletter, The Official Newsletter of XUG, the X User’s Group, "Things That Happen When You Say ‘X Windows’", for the definitive list of its official names, and the dire consequences of getting it wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28522534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28522534
- johnklos 5y agoSearches won't work properly because of people who don't care about correctness. That's the primary reason why some of us care.
- 5y ago
- bsharitt 5y agoI remember back in the late 90's or maybe 2000/2001 running some distro with X from two floppies. OSes that could be run from floppy were great because my parents weren't to keen on me partitioning the hard drive of the family computer, though there were options like the version of Mandrake that easily installed to a disk file on the Windows hard drive(it was probably possible on others, but Mandrake made it easy) and ZipSlack that used a UMSDOS filesystem to run on top of DOS, though it would leave weird little files around the file system that were noticeable once you went back to Windows, so it wasn't popular with my parents either.
- Lammy 5y agoWas it https://web.archive.org/web/20051212184456/http://mulinux.sunsite.dk/ https://web.archive.org/web/20051212184456/http://mulinux.su... ?
- pera 5y agoOh wow I remember using this distro on a very old Toshiba 386 laptop, good times...
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5y ago>I remember back in the late 90's or maybe 2000/2001 running some distro with X from two floppies. Perhaps it was "2-Disk Xwindow Linux": https://web.archive.org/web/20020408075857/http://www.mungkie.btinternet.co.uk/projects/2diskXwin.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20020408075857/http://www.mungki...
- Zardoz84 5y agomuLinux was know for getting a minimal but usable Linux on a single floppy and using two to get a X11 working environment.
- dekhn 5y agomy first linux distro (TAMU) included X11, g++, and emacs all on 4 floppies. Era: 1994-95
- fsiefken 5y agowow, that's less then dos and win3.11 combined
- etaioinshrdlu 5y agoThe Xwoaf-rebuild-4.0 floppy image booted up for me first try in Parallels. Made me unreasonably happy. Linux 2.2.26 is kind of hilariously old. Linux 2.2 was released in 1999.
- smoldesu 5y agoFWIW, it also runs out-of-the-box in QEMU, VMWare and Virtualbox.
- cogburnd02 5y agoWouldn't it work with a newer kernel though, too?
- LukeShu 5y agoGenerally speaking, newer kernels are bigger. Back in the day, Damn Small Linux (DSL) made the controversial decision to stake themselves to Linux 2.4 because 2.6 was just too big and bloated, they said.
- deaddodo 5y agoA newer kernel most definitely wouldn't fit on a floppy. 2.4+ was where they loosened the requirements and kernels started getting into the multi-megabyte territory.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 10GBps 5y agoNice. Now do it in Rust running (and building) on a Pentium.
- exikyut 5y agoy tho
- gered 5y agoVery cool! Just tried this out for fun on my 486DX2 PC ( https://i.imgur.com/NOeR1Ad.jpg https://i.imgur.com/NOeR1Ad.jpg ). It boots, but obviously the minimal kernel only has included support for a small set of hardware, which does not include serial mouse, S3 805 VGA (works, but graphical artifacts), and 3C509 ISA network card. Will have to try out the provided toolchain and scripts to try and see if I can rebuild with better hardware support for my 486. Why bother, you ask? Why not, I say!
- brassattax 5y agoReminds me of 20 years ago, working with a fledgling "internet appliance software" company.. our existing software was on QNX and we wanted to transition it to Linux. I got a working system up with web browser, email, and chat (irc/jabber) up on a system with a 32MB Disk-On-Chip. Couldn't have done it without busybox! We used Qt Framebuffer instead of X Window... but same idea. :) Well done getting it to boot off a floppy!
- exikyut 5y agoSounds like the browser and chat system was in-house, to be able to just switch out X for Qt? Very cool.
- peterisza 5y agoToday's flashlight apps are bigger than this. It makes me sad how programmers can keep up with the insane improvement of the hardware, only to make software slower and bigger than ever, while adding very little useful functionality.
- scoopertrooper 5y agoProgrammers still carefully optimise things when it matters e.g, IoT. However, to lament programmers not eking out every megabyte of payload size is nonsensical - in my opinion. Why waste a scarce resource (labour hours) optimising the use of a cheap and plentiful resource (bandwidth/storage). Imagine a world where fusion energy was the most commonly employed energy source and the cost of electricity in both environmental and economic terms was negligible. Should we still have energy-star rated refrigerators? Why? What purpose would it serve?
- peterisza 5y agoSo: 1. we save a couple of labour hours 2. make every phone and computer a lot slower and more annoying to use for hundreds of millions of people It is not just a lack of optimization, I don't even know what to call it at this point. Intentional wastefulness probably. I am a software engineer but I can't even imagine how a flashlight app can be several megabytes. What is inside it?
- to11mtm 5y ago> However, to lament programmers not eking out every megabyte of payload size is nonsensical - in my opinion. Why waste a scarce resource (labour hours) optimising the use of a cheap and plentiful resource (bandwidth/storage). I'll give a counterpoint to this example; MineSweeper on the Windows Store. Last time I took a look, the installation size of this app was more than a 'functional' install of the entire Windows 98 OS, including a slightly-less-colorful version of the same game. Or, for a more 'Business' example. Autocad 2013+; it became bloated, frustrating to work with, and expensive. > Imagine a world where fusion energy was the most commonly employed energy source and the cost of electricity in both environmental and economic terms was negligible. Should we still have energy-star rated refrigerators? Why? What purpose would it serve? In a 'happy path' fusion scenario, the best refrigerator design would be one with the lowest ozone depleting and/or greenhouse gas emitting setup, so long as the energy consumption was overall sustainable on the grid a lot of them were hooked up to.
- fsiefken 5y agolooks good, i once stripped down win 3.11 to fit on a 2MF 3.0 2 MB formatted floppy, the compressed win.uc2 extracted to a dos ramdisk. this x floppy seems more efficient
- kohlerm 5y agoMy second Linux installation came with Xwindows. IIRC that were like 4 or 5 floppies