E.9. Tiny Applications and Distributions

A small collection yet, but I'm looking for more information.

1. BOA - "Lightweight and High Performance WebServer. boa is a single-tasking HTTP server. That means that unlike traditional web servers, it does not fork for each incoming connection, nor does it fork many copies of itself to handle multiple connections. It internally multiplexes all of the ongoing HTTP connections, and forks only for CGI programs (which must be separate processes.) Preliminary tests show boa is capable of handling several hundred hits per second on a 100 MHz Pentium."

2. MGR - a graphical windows system, which uses much less resources than X.

3. Low Bandwidth X:

   Alan Cox in LINUX REDUX February 1998 " .. there are two that handle normal applications very nicely. LBX (Low Bandwidth X) is the official application of the X11 Consortium (now OpenGroup. Dxpc is the alternative most people prefer. These systems act as proxy X11 servers and compress datastreams by well over 50 percent for normal requests, often reaching a reduction to 25 percent of the original bandwidth usage. With dxpc, X Windows applications are quite usable over a 28.8 modem link or across the Internet."

4. blackbox - "This is a window manager for X. It is similar in many respects to such popular packages as Window Maker, Enlightenment, and FVWM2. You might be interested in this package if you are tired of window managers that are a heavy drain on your system resources, but you still want an attractive and modern-looking interface."

   Figure E-1. Screenshot of blackbox.

   

5. xfce is a lightweight and stable desktop environment for various UNIX systems.

6. linux-lite - distribution based on a 1.x.x kernel for systems with only 2MB memory and 10MB harddisk. URL see above.

7. SmallLinux is a three disk micro-distribution of Linux and utilities. Based on kernel 1.2.11. Root disk is ext2 format and has fdisk and mkfs.ext2 so that a harddisk install can be done. Useful to boot up on old machines with less than 4MB of RAM.

8. cLIeNUX - client-use-oriented Linux distribution.

9. minix , not a Linux but a UNIX useful for very small systems, such as 286 CPU and 640K RAM . There is even X11 support named mini-x by David I. Bell .

10. screen - tiny but powerful console manager. John M. Fisk <fiskjm_AT_ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu> in LINUX GAZETTE :"It's a GUI, GUI, GUI, GUI world! " -- or so the major OS manufacturers would have you belief. Truth is, that while this is increasingly the case, there are times when the command line interface (CLI) is still a very good choice for getting things done. It's fast, generally efficient, and is a good choice on memory or CPU constrained machines. And don't forget that there are still a lot of very nifty things that can be done at the console."

11. tinyirc - "A tiny, stripped down IRC Client. Doesn't have most of the more advance commands in the ircII family of IRC Clients, nor does it have any color, but it works, and it's tiny."

12. JOVE Jonathans Own Version of Emacs, a small but powerful editor. .