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I've been building LFS/BLFS for about a month now, with multiple failures and almost no successes, and I've just been informed that there exist Xorg-like window systems that are incredibly tiny, as Xorg's LFS build is over 200MB of just source packages.

I Googled around the web, but the Wikipedia article on TinyX pointed me to a nonexistent home page for a nice Xorg clone.

I'm looking to build a DSL-like distro (truthfully, it's a faster clone of ChromeOS), and I've got everything ready, except an X server.

What I was looking for was the following:

  • Something that's reasonably small, as I was hoping to get my distro down to 50MB when it is compressed.
  • Something that is fairly compatible with the normal X server (I don't know what I'm talking about, but I was hoping for something that works with any X application).
  • Something that will work fully (no hiccups!) with OpenBox or FluxBox (preferably OpenBox, as I've almost made my theme for it).
  • Something that works with Plymouth, as an epic boot screen make a bad operating system look good in the eyes of simple users.

Also, as a side question, how do I package my final build? I've built a small rendering system which I wish to distribute, but I can't figure out how to make an ISO out of it, like Ubuntu or DSL.

tshepang
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Blender
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1 Answers1

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Xfree86 (http://www.xfree86.org/) includes "tiny" X servers in their build. I believe they are video-card-specific, in that there's an MGA server, and an ATI server, etc etc. No loadable modules.

I have built XFree86 from source a coule of years ago (under Slackware 3.2!) but I don't think I tried the "tiny" servers to see if they worked. The rest of the compile worked fine.

I tried XFree86 under a more modern (2.6.35, I think) Linux kernel and distro this summer, and it would not compile without significant source mods, some of which didn't seem at all clear how to do to me. So, I can't say if Xfree86 would meet your needs or not.

  • Ouch. What kind of source mods? I don't think running `2.6.36.2` (latest stable) would make this any easier... I'm a bit confused: isn't XFree86 the predecessor of X11? It says on the site that X provides an API for applications, while XFree86 does not. I hope this won't hamper the performance of my OS... – Blender Dec 10 '10 at 16:31
  • BLFS has some documentation on XFree86, and it too requires some significant source mods. At least it can be done, so I will post back if I get it running. Meanwhile, I'll see what else I can dig up. Thanks! – Blender Dec 10 '10 at 16:35
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    @Blender: XFree86 is an implementation of X11 (the former de facto standard on free unices). Xorg is another; it branched off XFree86 a few years ago and quickly supplanted it. The respective Wikipedia articles have more background. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Dec 10 '10 at 18:19
  • XFree86 hasn't been updated in a long time, and doesn't support most recent hardware. – alanc Dec 10 '10 at 21:27