"baby" Quirky

My Quirky distro is where I am supposed to be trying out new ideas, so I am thinking that the "Baby Linux" will debut as a Quirky.

I have abandoned Buildroot and uClibc, but I learnt a few things. One is how to create a smaller Xorg, 'vesa' driver only. I have taken this knowledge of a smaller Xorg over to T2, and I am now doing a compile of the same package versions as used in Quirky 1.3.

I need to explain something about Quirky: 1.3 was very popular. Announced here:
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201009/quirky-13-released.html

...one of it's great features was a cut-down commercial nVidia driver in the ISO.

However, Quirky 1.4 was the precursor to Wary, in which I rolled Xorg back to 7.3. This had advantages and disadvantages. One advantage was I was able to put in the old i810 Xorg driver. Also Xvesa. Disadvantage was didn't run so well on newer video hardware. Quirky 1.4 announcement:
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201011/quirky-14-released.html

Anyway, T2 is compiling now. I am planning to bring the T2 compiled binary packages over to Woof and do a Quirky build, then do some manual work to create "Baby Linux".

That's the plan anyway. We'll see how it goes.

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Comments

Quirky 1.3 webcam issues
Username: Terryphi
Quirky 1.3 was (is!) great. The only snag is that although Skype installs OK the Video Device Test does not work (i.e. it does not display the webcam video.) Also I cannot get guvcview to work - probably a lib versions issue. Quirky 1.3 packages with these issues fixed would be very welcome.

Minimal Xorg
Username: Dougal
"I pointed this out to Jemima a while ago, seems relevant here: http://vignatti.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/xorg-server-1-9-minimal/

Re minimal Xorg
Username: BarryK
"Dougal, That is really radical! The config that I have used, that I figured out from Buildroot: Well, I don't have the complete .configure parameters, just the extra one that I added to T2's default parameters: [code]--disable-config-hal --disable-xnest --disable-xephyr --disable-xvfb --enable-xorg --disable-kdrive --disable-xfbdev --disable-dri --disable-aiglx --disable-xvmc --disable-composite --enable-dri2 --disable-screensaver --disable-dmx --disable-glx[/code]

libdrm
Username: BarryK
"Taking libdrm as an example, Buildroot gave libdrm as a required dependency for the packages that I had enabled. So, it is interesting that the Meego guy disabled that. Of course, the Buildroot people did not necessarily get the dependency info exactly right. I have already done the compile in T2. But, it seems that libdrm is not required, not used by xf86-video-vesa. Well, libdrm itself is small, so it is probably not a big deal, just a redundant thing, but I might recompile whatever packages link against it, without it, a bit later. Yeah, it seems that libdrm is only really useful if opengl/mesa is present: http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/

Libdrm
Username: Dougal
"Yes libdrm is obviously for DRM, which alas, everybody these days seems to take for granted (see the new Ubuntu plans, the Wayland X server etc. -- all expect GL, 3D support and all that. Note that I originally thought of that guy's config as a replacement for Xvesa: compile the minimal version (with the "vesa" driver built in) and just rename it "tinyX" or something, then it can be installed parallel to the normal Xorg.

microquirky
Username: scsijon
"Consider looking at BG-Tiny and how it is setup for your base, ?maybe, runs on 4meg ram and a 386. It fits on a floppy, as is, is currently 2.4 uses uClibc and BusyBox. I'm sure you could 2.6 it ans with our "busybox developers" extend it's capabilities.. and: Consider trying Wayland for Graphics instead of X11, there are some "hitches" as it doesn't go with some older video hardware, but then, it's not that old... and there are suppose to be Ubuntu and Fedira Binaries to play with out there. One good thing with it is it doesn't use proprietry drivers as it uses Mesa and DRI, doesn't seem that hard to build your own anyway from the source. just a couple of thoughts

Tags: quirky