Re: Can you build your own desktop Client?

On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:20:07 -0700, Day Brown wrote:

On Mar 20, 7:08 pm, ray <r...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Best to install Gentoo from a minimal install, following the 'book' at
the gentoo.org website. You can include as much or as little as you
want.
Even the minimum is 137 meg ISO.

I'm not as clear as I hope. But if there were a distro website that made
up the ISO on the fly, with just what I actually asked for, the download
would not be anywhere near that much. A few meg for the boot & kernel,
maybe 20 for a browser, and a meg for some utilities like MC, Cfdisk,
and XF86Config.

I think you're quite clear. But you need a certain amount of
infrastructure in order to enable, for example, networking. And X is not
one stand alone program, etc.


But rather than have all the drivers XF86Config on the ISO, have them
sitting on the server, and so you only download what you actually need.
As is, it seems the various distros always forget some things. Some have
a driver for my SCSI card, some dont. Some do well with my oddball
1600X900 LCD, some dont. Some see my camera and recognize it as a
flashcard, and some dont.

No matter what distro I get, I end up with something it dont have, and
every single time I've tried to download and install a solution, it has
not worked. Often I get messages about dependency issues, but then other
times, no clue, no error messages, but no icon or trace on the file
system that its there.

Certain packages depend on others to be able to compile - there is no way
around that.


So, my kharma being what it is, I wanna start by downloading the kernel
& boot, putting that on another drive, then one at a time, download and
install what the platform needs. Right up front. I dont wanna waste time
doing the whole damn install only to find out later it dont work right.

I suggest you look at the Gentoo 'book' at gentoo.org - as previously
mentioned, the other option is LFS.


I have been downloading and installing DOS software for nearly 25 years.
It aint rocket science. If it dont work, it tells me what driver is
missing, and when I install that, it works. If I download for Linux, I
get told there are dependency issues, I dont have the right C library.
If I try to download that, it tells me I dont have the right compiler.
Its kafkaesque. Every time I download a 'solution', I'm told I need to
get something more.

That is exactly what package managers are for. If you attempt to install
a package with, for example, synaptic on a Debian based distro, it will
add all the dependencies.


RPM, apt-get, .deb, it does not matter. gz, tgz, zip, or whatever, the
archive is fulla clutter that I have no idea what it is there for. Or
where it goes as it rips by up the screen. I think a lot of the overhead
is for network security and to prevent users from trashing the OS. The
programmers all work in netowrked environments, and get to thinking its
like that for all of us. It aint.

All I got is a terminal. Client. Gentoo.org has a rap about a security
problem with 'vmsplice'. From what I can tell, its caused by an app
needing direct write access in case it exceeds the buffer. If that app
is on your own desktop, no biggie. Its your app, its been scanned. If it
JAVA, hmm. And again, its a big problem in a network with highspeed
broadband running heavy apps like multimedia.

But out on my end of the net, nothing comes in fast enuf to over lead
the buffers. I should be so lucky. I would prefer knowing a bit more
about what is actually running on my platform. One reason I like DOS, in
ordinary use, there's no background for sabotage software to be running
in.

And if I can build up a distro from the kernel on, I'll have a better
idea of just what is running, and not bother running security risks I
dont need.

.

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