Talk:SLICK/BASE CD project

From openSUSE

Why not to start with 10.0 that allows to export selection. Waiting for libzypp to get this featrue can take some time. --Rajko M 01:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jean, Apropos SLICK,

unlike original that was defined with goal that was far to large for the team, I would like to see something that is installable Knoppix like micro sized SUSE with old computers in mind. This way will solve problem that many users have:"They don't want to damage the newest machine, and on good old computer the newest SUSE is too slow". How to make such one CD distro should not be rocket science and take forever as there is a lot of examples out there. You mentioned one, the DSL. I was amazed how much is on it in just 50 MB. --Rajko M 18:40, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, there should be a lot of various SLICK distribution, so feel free to open the relevant page under the SLICK project page.

Top answer your questions (I copied here for share):

• In low end computer it's the yast install that sucks... too memory demanding, so we must find something to bypass YaST. The key part is the partitioning step, as there can be no swap space defined at that time.may be if we could have a YaST version accepting swap from the beginning, may be completely disk management free (apart the partition choice -prepartitioned disk) it could work.
• many old computer can't boot from cd... so a minimal boot must be done elsewhere. May be from usb? (usb key). At first try the usb storage drivers are far less problematic as cd/pcmcia ones. for 50-100Mo, a usbkey distro is much better than cd one :-)

jdd 08:33, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I tried DSL on one old computer, just to see how it works. Once system was installed it allows for expansion, but so far I understand it demands source code correction before compilation, and that is what I want to avoid, unless it can be done automatically.

I'll install old SUSE to see how far I can go with updates and what that brings. The idea is to install micro sized working system with swap and than make update.

BTW, to advertise idea of slick SUSE, we should discuss this on mail lists etc, too.

--Rajko M 13:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

If its only the swap space that is missing, you could try to create and add that before starting yast. To do this, you may use an ssh based install (ok, network card would be required and things are easier if you got an dhcp server in your network). At the bootprompt, enter:

usessh=1 sshpassword=<secret>

You will be prompted the connection data for your ssh connection. After this, just do your partitioning first, create the swap partitions and initiate the swap with swapon and then start yast. --Azouhr 09:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't works. I made my tests on a préconfigured machine and could not activate the swap. It's logical: Yast figures out it needs to partition and thus lock the disk. I also tried to open a console (during install) and type swap on, with no luck :-( But it should not be that difficult to discard completely the partition module :-) jdd

Take a look at Puppy Linux, http://www.PuppyLinux.com and their community edition, http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy203 because they have features like being able to remove the live CD to play a music CD, etc. and Open Office 2.0. It seems like you only need one updater like Klik, Smart or whatever. The bottom line is that it needs to be small like 2-300 MB, fit on a CD, be super user friendly and easily boot all computers.

SLICK/BASE CD - on Standard openSUSE CD/DVD-Set

What about, having SLICK / BASE CD as a selection on the standard openSUSE installation media. The content would be on CD1 (for the most common languages). So one will have (1) set of CD's (or one DVD) for installing the regular (full bloated) openSUSE, or can choose at the (installation) boot, to start with the SLICK installation.

That would for instant allow for a 1st lean installation on an older PC. One could then add as much as one wants (up to full openSUSE installation).

Especially on older PC's, the standard openSUSE installation might not work. (I had an older i486 PC with 128MB of RAM, where the installation crashed, or actually just slowed down and finally came to a stop, and I had several attemps of installations. Only when one installation came far enough to create a swap partition, I could use at a later attempt, only then could I manage to install openSUSE 10.2. - I never managed to get 10.1 running at all.)

So having the option for SLICK GUI installation with the standard installation media (CD's or DVD), would be a great advantage.