Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

Question

So, after a lot of work with compiling and tweeking, but also a lot of fun and learning, I've uploaded the first iso for the Arch Linux based distro for old computers, Lowarch.
I have mentioned my project <a href="http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=26711">before</a>, but I'll repeat myself just a little here:
How did I make it? The following is an almost correct simplification of the truth:
1. I made a CLFS (Cross Linux From Scratch), with the help of the uname hack, to make a i486 build system on my i686 machine.
2. I installed pacman and started to make packages for base. When they were finished, I installed them into an empty partition with pacman -r.
3. After booting into the new i486 base system, I continued to make packages, in the order of dependencies untill I had most of current and certain other packages I wanted.
This was not as simple as it sounds, since a lot of packages has started to be uncompilable because of changes to kernelheader, glibc, gcc or other libraries. This is where I have learned a lot about searching for patches and writing patches.
4. I made a i486 version of the 0.7.2 install cd by compiling busybox for i486 and using the already compiled i486 binaries for other commands.
What state is it in?
It's not tested much yet. It works for me on my two i586 laptops and on my i686 laptop. I'll be glad if anyone wants to try it out and tell me how it works for them. I have not seen any indications of serious problems, but remember, so far I'm the only one who has tested it. I'd me surprised if I haven't missed a lot of bugs.
Where can it be downloaded from?
Here:  http://lowarch.linuxophic.org/iso/lowarch-0.1.0.iso
(Edit: New url: http://www.lowarch.org/iso/lowarch-0.1.0.iso )
I'm making a webpage for it at http://lowarch.linuxophic.org  but it's not finished yet.
(Edit: It's finished, but with a new url: http://www.lowarch.org )
The online packages repo is uploading at the moment, but it'll take a while. My webhost's upload speed is 50kb/s. I hope the download is faster. Let's try....hmm. yes, a lot faster. Good.
That's it for now. Hope someone wants to try it. Remember, together with the uname hack, it's a perfect way to get a i486 Arch build environment on a i686 machine.
And, package lists etc. will come on the webpage in a few hours..if I don't fall asleep first 

Answer 1

filoktetes wrote:It looks like two people have downloaded the iso already, so now I look forward to get some feedback.
I downloaded it yesterday to test it in a VM (useless, I know, at least it worked). I should be able to test it on Saturday on i486 hardware.
filoktetes wrote:If you're interested, you could also help me out by looking at the  <a href="http://lowarch.linuxophic.org/node/6">package list</a> and give me your opinons on which packages are unneccesary on old systems, and which you feel are missing.
I'm thinking about some WM that could be nice for older systems, like Openbox, Ion3, Wmii and such. From what I see, there's only Twm, Xfce & Fluxbox available, but hey, people can use PKGBUILD from i686 arch and those tiny WM are not so long to compile
Speaking about packages, how are you going to handle repositories ? I mean, you currently have a "current" repos but it's not really following the default Arch conventions (Xfce should be in an "Extra" repository, "Current" only contains the base system). Any plans ? Something like :
current-i486
extra-i486
...could be nice to avoid i686/i486 incompatibilities in case someone wants to use mixed repos as you said in a previous post. And each package should be in the same repos as the original Arch to keep things simpler.
filoktetes wrote:There's a category for that discussion in the forum. By the way, there's still a chance to get the first post in the whole forum. I feel the nice forum I made is like a big cake, and nobody dares to take the first slice. 
Should we report bugs/suggestions in this topic or use the dedicated forum ? What's better ?