A KDE4 Operating System In Less Than 200MB

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A KDE4 Operating System In Less Than 200MB

SLAX 7 is now up to a release candidate state and it packs a KDE 4 desktop environment while the entire operating system is less than 200MB in size...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTIyMzU

[pingufunkybeat]

How much of those 200 mb are the kde actually?

Less than LibreOffice, and probably comparable to Firefox.

[TomasM]

KDE is 25MB
KDE dependencies 60MB
KDE applications and such are 17MB
FireFox 20MB
Xorg 12MB
The rest is core Linux system tools, 50MB

[AJSB]

KDE is 25MB
KDE dependencies 60MB
KDE applications and such are 17MB
FireFox 20MB
Xorg 12MB
The rest is core Linux system tools, 50MB

Hi Tomas, i'm the "AJSB" that emailed you today (...or was it yesterday ?....)

So...how about to port it to ARM and my other questions ?

Really nice work squeezing KDE4, i'm reading your blog from time to time...


BTW, people, S7RC1 feels really snappy

[BitRot]

How much of those 200 mb are the kde actually? 180? Face it, KDE is a pig and this will not change with these feeble attempts to persuade users that it's anything close to efficient.

As you can see by Tomas' post, KDE doesn't consume 180 mb. And KDE _is_ efficient, if you disable all effects it runs faster than DEs like LXDE(!).

[TomasM]

So...how about to port it to ARM and my other questions ?

Actually, I answered that one so many times that I'm losing track who got the answer and who didn't
ARM version was planed for a while, but I discovered that it's not such universal as like x86. There are many ARM devices out there and each one (as far as I understand it) needs different firmware to boot. I can't possibly support all ARM devices, so I would have to pick just few, and that makes no sense to me.

Else it is actually pretty simple to make Slax for ARM, all sources are available on FTP and Slackware (which is base for Slax) already has official ARM version as well. Unfortunately I don't have any fast ARM device here, just some RaspberryPI which has just 256MB, it's not possible to recompile KDE4 on that... it needs around 4GB of RAM for compilation (yet it runs just fine on 256MB of RAM when compiled).

[Veerappan]

Actually, I answered that one so many times that I'm losing track who got the answer and who didn't
ARM version was planed for a while, but I discovered that it's not such universal as like x86. There are many ARM devices out there and each one (as far as I understand it) needs different firmware to boot. I can't possibly support all ARM devices, so I would have to pick just few, and that makes no sense to me.

Else it is actually pretty simple to make Slax for ARM, all sources are available on FTP and Slackware (which is base for Slax) already has official ARM version as well. Unfortunately I don't have any fast ARM device here, just some RaspberryPI which has just 256MB, it's not possible to recompile KDE4 on that... it needs around 4GB of RAM for compilation (yet it runs just fine on 256MB of RAM when compiled).

Building on ARM devices is a PITA, sometimes. I'd recommend checking out the various cross-compiling toolchains. I've used scratchbox2 for some cell-phone related Linux development in the past and it worked pretty well.

A quick google search actually turned up what looks to be a very relevant result (a how-to/script for apt-based distros which will set up scratchbox2, qemu, and a rootfs for raspberry pi cross-compiling):
http://pastebin.com/4Jp1WPTb

[frign]

As you can see by Tomas' post, KDE doesn't consume 180 mb. And KDE _is_ efficient, if you disable all effects it runs faster than DEs like LXDE(!).

Still not faster than DWM...

[RealNC]

Still not faster than DWM...

And DWM is not faster than Windows 3.1.

[frign]

And DWM is not faster than Windows 3.1.

It actually is, ignoring the fact that your example is complete nonsense.