Damn Small Linux?

[dagger89]

I mean we have Windows 95, why not Damn Small Linux (DSL)... It should be much faster, right? Or Puppy Linux...

I know its pretty much useless, but still cool....

[NoQuarter]

I wish we had linux on the PSP,I could certainly find use for it.I'm a member of the PSP-linux mailing list and no news from it in over a month :(

[dagger89]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damn_Small_Linux

Whatever happened to that other linux port? Was it fake?



This message was sent to me 19 Oct 2003 by Nick Hill. Paul Knight and him did a good amount of experimenting with Dam Small and retro hardware. Their activities culminated in a "Retro Hardware Party" where they ran DSL on a 486SX33 and a 486DX2, both with 16MB of ram.
Quote from mail:

Thank you Nick Hill and Paul Knight for bring down the old hard ware and doing the tests!

This message is being sent from the damn small machine using Sylpheed.

We successfully used a machine- a 486SX33 16Mb ram to surf the web and send email. Even used it as a remote station to edit pictures using the GIMP over a broadband link. Not exactly fast, but can be done. Takes 10-15 seconds to render news.bbc.co.uk.

The machine couldn't cope with an Ogg Vorbis stream at 11Khz/19Kbit mono. However, I tried with a 486DX2 processor / 16Mb and it worked.. Just! The missing FPU on the 486SX makes a difference for multimedia streams! The 486SX took 3 minutes to decode half one second. The DX2, however, coped in real time.

We held a retro hardware 'party' this evening, complete with chocolate biscuits and tea.

So now we know- web surfing with a modern operating system on atticware can be done- and we now are no longer restricted to tupperware parties- we have atticware parties!

I have attached a couple of pictures from our party. One shows the dmesg screen showing the processor kicking out an amazing 16.58 BogoMips and the 16Mb system ram can be seen. I have also included a photo of me and paul proudly showing off our atticware multitasking games, a (paused) instance of XMMS and 2 browser windows.

I have included an archive of the output of dmesg and ps ax.

BTW Glinks would not work on the SX chip but works on the DX chip.

It should thoretically be possible...

[NoQuarter]

You mean the UClinux?If so I believe it passes a kernel panic then crashes.
It's been awhile since that was posted.
This is what I think sux:
The PSP is very similar to the PS2 but it is illegal to revervse engineer the bootloader for the PS2 linux or the RTE or whatever.This may be a stumbling block to bringing linux to the psp.Plus we just don't have enough people working on it.I could be way off base there though.
As far as a non PS2 version linux I think it's really an issue of not enough or anybody working on it actively.

[dagger89]

Hopefully sum1 decides to work on it... it would be pretty cool, considering the Recommended processor speed is a 200 mhz Pentium I.....

Too bad no one is really looking into it...

And whatever happened with the coder who created the app to load win 95 on the psp... Did he mysteriously vanish?

[NoQuarter]

Haven't heard about him since the port of bochs

[Cap'n 1time]

you dont want linux running like win 95 with an x86 emulator... A solid port would be needed. Also you annot compare the psp's hardware to any PC hardware, so dont try.

[psiko_scweek]

exactly what Captain Awesome said, eitherway, isnt there a PS2 version of Linux? that should port easily if im correct.

http://blackrhino.xrhino.com/main.php?page=home

couldnt find a source but im sure one has to be available given that its Linux.

[Yessy2952]

This is a good idea guys. I hope someone takes the idea and port it out.



Yessy

[NoQuarter]

I think there are legal issues about the RTE or bootloader for PS2 linux.If these could be worked around that would be great.I don't know if they apply if you write the loader from scratch.I know doing any sort of workaround on PS2 linux to avoid the RTE is illegal:(

[psiko_scweek]

really? i didnt know too much about the PS2 Linux, only that it was there. lol. Linux would be cool. I still want Mac Os X :p

[dagger89]

I'm happy with linux... It would be more of a novelty, but pretty cool, and possibly useful (Openoffice + OSK)

[psiko_scweek]

i dont think OpenOffice would work well on the PSP due to memory constraints.

[NoQuarter]

Yeah most heavy graphical apps would probably be pretty slow,then again if PS2 linux was bootable on the PSP it might not be so bad.
I just wish I knew what the legal implications of porting it would be,out of curiousity.
I asked around about installing PS2 linux on a FFXI harddrive without the RTE and found out it was illegal.
On a side note I'm downloading slackware 11 now :) :)