linux

Quick update to SnackLinux, rolled out Linux 4.15.2 with Busybox 1.28.0. Also switched over to x86_64 only (for now at least) since it simplifies a lot of things. I removed the need to staticly link everything and get rid of that niche, since a few other smaller distros cover that (Alpine Linux for example). Again, this simplifies building packages and running into less issues.

I'm happy to announce that the SnackLinux project now hosts a Raspbian apt mirror! It is automatic via the mirror direction system if you're located in the US, or you can use add the repo to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://raspbian.snacklinux.org/raspbian jessie main contrib non-free

Edit: This has been fixed in the latest firmare update 4.5.10.25

SnackLinux now has a whopping 31 packages, which include a (somewhat) working gcc toolchain and other fun GNU utilities (vitetris included!). I was able to add Docker support as well, which is just tarballed userland. Getting a working gcc toolchain was a bit of a pain in the butt.

 I have recently discovered the Nimrod programming language. I usually don't branch out on languages because, well, stuff you don't know can be scary. I'm surprised how easy it is to get going though, it reminds me quite a bit of Python. I put up a test project on Github that fetches the weather for a given location.

 SnackLinux finally has a domain, snacklinux.org! The source is still on Github and all the ISO images have moved as well.

 For the most part, SnackLinux works. I've been having problems with Busybox, so I've made packages for coreutils, binutils, sed, grep and gawk. When compiling anything, I get:

segfault at 0 ip    (null) sp bfdb1cbc error 4 in busybox[8048000+e8000]

 I recently bought another IBM Model M (1395660) on eBay the other day, not thinking that it is actually a terminal keyboard. I thought it has a detachable SDL cable like my current Model M (1391401). I was wrong. Turns out it has a non-removable RJ-45 plug instead, thus being a terminal keyboard. Well, aftering some researching, some were able to get it to work by using an ATMega. I was able to find a pinout of the RJ45 plug on the keyboard, and simply just wire it up to a PS/2 cable. Though apparently, the colour of wire for PS/2 is not standardized, which led to testing each pin to see what it does. I cannibalized an old Microsoft keyboard for the cable and was able to hook the wires up straight to each other.

 Four months later and I finally updated SnackLinux. I changed  SnackLinux from a ramdisk to initramfs, updated the Linux 3.10.1 and cleaned up how things build. The full project is available on my Bitbucket and ISOs are available to download here.

 I've spent the last week or two working on SnackLinux, a small Linux distro. I managed to get uClibc in there, as well as tcc, which makes it somewhat useful. The source of it all is there, so you can compile the distro yourself (sans the packages). There are also ISOs which you can download here and fire them up in a virtual machine.