[HN Gopher] X Window System on a Floppy
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X Window System on a Floppy
Author : marcodiego
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-09-13 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pupngo.dk)
(TXT) w3m dump (pupngo.dk)
| unwind wrote:
| This 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
| beervirus wrote:
| Picking 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 wrote:
| I for myself get annoyed every time I see this misspell. The
| name is X Window. Even microserfs can learn it.
| johnklos wrote:
| Searches won't work properly because of people who don't care
| about correctness. That's the primary reason why some of us
| care.
| fortran77 wrote:
| The author of the linked article didn't call it by the wrong
| name in the title. Changing the title to this incorrect name
| may mislead people into thinking that the person who wrote
| the linked content is incompetent, unqualified, or foolish.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Check here: http://pupngo.dk/xwinflpy/Hacklin.htm
| marcodiego wrote:
| Done.
| unwind wrote:
| Thanks! Much appreciated.
| bsharitt wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Was it
| https://web.archive.org/web/20051212184456/http://mulinux.su...
| ?
| pera wrote:
| Oh wow I remember using this distro on a very old Toshiba 386
| laptop, good times...
| xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote:
| >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.mungki...
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| muLinux was know for getting a minimal but usable Linux on a
| single floppy and using two to get a X11 working environment.
| dekhn wrote:
| my first linux distro (TAMU) included X11, g++, and emacs all on
| 4 floppies. Era: 1994-95
| 10GBps wrote:
| Nice. Now do it in Rust running (and building) on a Pentium.
| [deleted]
| throw0101a wrote:
| Back 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-144...
|
| * http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html
| drewzero1 wrote:
| QNX, 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/ [1] http://menuetos.net/ [2]
| http://www.kolibrios.org/en/
| tcbawo wrote:
| 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!
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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-...
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > 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...
|
| 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
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| That 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?
| [deleted]
| marcodiego wrote:
| I loved Dillo but its development seems stuck. As a
| replacement I use netsurf.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Probably NetSurf. https://www.netsurf-browser.org
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| NetSurf'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
| destructionator wrote:
| links actually does have a graphic mode... see
| http://links.twibright.com/features.php screenshots
| section.
|
| It really isn't too bad.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Thanks, I didn't know!
| wslh wrote:
| With 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/
|
| 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
| fouc wrote:
| QNX had a Photon microGUI that is probably superior to X
| windows (Wayland). It's a shame it never got fully open
| sourced.
| danachow wrote:
| Wayland 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.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| What 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 wrote:
| Many other car brands (often just the instrument cluster
| though). Otherwise probably not much consumer stuff, way
| more industrial/medical/infrastructure fields.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| Until recently, Cisco's IOS-XR was based on the QNX
| microkernel.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS_XR
| nateguchi wrote:
| BMW's iDrive (used in all their production cars since
| around 2011) uses it
| sigzero wrote:
| I ran that! It was actually really good.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| The 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.
| cogburnd02 wrote:
| Wouldn't it work with a newer kernel though, too?
| LukeShu wrote:
| Generally 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.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| my first time touching Linux, was when these Kernel version was
| new.
| smoldesu wrote:
| FWIW, it also runs out-of-the-box in QEMU, VMWare and
| Virtualbox.
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(page generated 2021-09-13 23:00 UTC)