SLICK/BASE CD project
Basic Idea
There is a real need for a SUSE Linux distribution able to run on available old cheap (nearly free) computers. The Dell laptop Travelmate 320 (8 years old) is a P230n (yes, P "one"). I could give him 145Mb ram (free gift, like the computer) and make SUSE 10.0 run very happily (12Gb HD), but not the 10.1. The install is often the problem. CD ROM is not bootable, so live cd is not a solution here, but YaST install (even autoyast) sucks at the partitioning step, because no swap can be defined here and autoyast insist to use all the drive. A small, fast minimal text install should be nice, xfce better, if kde runs, why not?
First draft
so, to start the reflexion usually we had to make a software choice with Yast, save it as .sel file then continue. This is no more possible for 10.1 and won't be again until at least 10.2 (libzypp don't allow this, AFAIK), so we have to find a better way.
BASE_CD: First, my goal is to have a single drive installable distributions. Hopefully live cd, but this is very secondary for me (there may be several cd kinds). What I want is a way, giving the cd and any system running (may be floppy) to be able to copy the cd to the hard drive and boot from this. Let's name this one BASE_CD.
- as first draft, a minimal text install is good
- must boot from a GRUB floppy
- must only use cp -a or tar to be installed
- must use pre-made partition
I think the best way (as starting point) should be to have a very minimal one (no yast... only CLI). If this one works, it would be very easy to add to it for a second step CD
problems I see: initrd must have to be quite simple. Kernel needs most modules pre-compiled (no modules, in fact)
I know DSL (Dawn Small Linux) is only 50Mb, so we can do :-) size is not a problem of this sort here.
Ideas to follow
Try using the install in a directory YaST module. eventually create a CD for a specific target, then enlarge.