[LAU] Shopping for a linux distro

[Loki Davison]

On 5/4/07, danni <danni.coy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > No recommendation, but a few comments;
> >
> > It's fairly straightforward to get X to run without a window manager -
> > just don't start one! This should work well as long as your single app
> > only has a single window. With more than one window, you more or less
> > need a window manager.
>
> The application in question is freewheeling and yes it is single window. I
> have written a script to make all this happen for X including starting jack
> and making all the right connections. I am just not happy with the boot
> speed
> of the current setup.... and am having difficulty finding reliable
> documentation to improve it.
>
> >
> > "Working firewire" depends highly on what firewire hardware you are
> > using, since firewire audio devices don't have the same kind of
> > standardisation that USB devices do. Check with the FreeBoB people.
>
> Yes the device is supported by freebob -> Some minimalist distro's for
> example
> Puppy linux don't ship with Firewire drivers enabled in the kernel and it is
> a conciderable PITA to compile these from source.
>
> > As long as you're not planning to distribute the software packages you
> > build (in which case you have to worry about dependencies and
> > compatibility), it's pretty easy to build your own packages at least on
> > DEB and RPM based systems. Just install Checkinstall, and type
> > 'checkinstall' instead of 'make install' when you've built the software.
> > It will generate a package file automatically.
>
> A deb based system would be ideal.... What I really want though is something
> fairly minimal with good documentation on how to rip out anything unnessary
> out of the boot process.  ~15 seconds to a usuable system would be a nice
> target. A realtime kernel would be great too....
>

I've heard initng is useful for this, high speed booting. Make sure it
doesn't start much and does as much in parallel as possible at boot.

Loki