Re: [GNU-linux-libre] RLSD GNU/Linux-libre 2.x

[Jason Self]

fr33domlover asked:
> a tiny distro for old hardware

x86_64 machines, which are one of the stated targets, are not old.
Imagine a 12-core Intel Xeon.

> I'd just like to understand why something with minimal benefit

It's not clear to me why you're reluctant to provide easy access to a
compiler & complete toolchain to build from scratch. In fact, in
reviewing the website I am not able to find any information about how
to actually build RLSD regardless of the method. libreCMC in
comparison does provide information and instructions on their website:
https://librecmc.org/librecmc/wiki?name=Build+HOWTO

Julian Marchant <address@hidden> wrote ..

> You're talking about how long it takes to compile. The way I 
> interpret the exception for distros like LibreWRT and LibreCMC is 
> that it's for systems going on devices that *can't* do self-hosting
> because they don't have enough storage space. That's a very 
> different situation.

Exactly. In the case of libreCMC, there are devices targeted which
contain only 4MB of permanent storage. This is too small the hold the
source code of the software that runs on there. Go look at the
tarballs of Linux-libre and you'll see that the source code of the
kernel alone is far more than 4MB. They can't hold their own source
code but even if they somehow could there's the matter of the CPU:
They're not powerful enough to do so. It would take forever, or at
least long enough as to simulate forever, but in truth the machines
have such limited RAM that the machine would run out of RAM and not be
able to successfully compile its own software anyway. For this reason
it's common to cross-compile on a larger and more powerful host system.

This is not the case on x86: Permanent storage can usually be
increased easily by adding a new or additional HDD or SSD. RAM can be
upgraded to provide a sufficient quantity, etc.

Also, I'm told that libreCMC is also self-hosting on x86: You can
build the toolchain and successfully compile a functioning system
using only the tools that the libreCMC folks provide.