WDL_GO distributions

Below to be rebranded from WeeDogLinux naming back to original FirstRib project name:

WeeDogLinux recently began to provide a new variation called WDL_GO systems

Currently there are two main WDL_GO system creation utilities. These have been announced previously on rockedge's forum, but I'll repeat some details here for the timeline blog.

1. The first WDL_GO creation mechanisms

are provided as options (vnopm and vmini) in latest build_firstrib_rootfs script.

These are for Void Linux flavour and there are two options depending what the WDL_GO distro creator wants:

i. vnopm (contains no package manager at all).

Currently testing frugal install booted WDLGO vnopm system that has Arch kernel and modules. Plan to use much smaller Void 4.19 kernel, however, in release for older systems. The one under test has just enough modules to boot from my own system hard drive:

        01firstrib_rootfs.sfs	1.2MiB
        initrd.gz		1.2MiB
        vmlinuz-5.7.2-arch1-1 	7.1MB

Above frugal install boots fine and can connect to the internet via ethernet out-of-the-box. Immediately after booting, utility ‘free’ reported 27MB RAM used. Core boots to simple cmdline busybox-only system, but can be expanded by addon sfs to anything really (with or without adding any package manager). By default, both new distro options use basic SysVinit via busybox and simple (provided/used) inittab and /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit script, which builder can edit to call up, for example, /etc/rc.local or whatever… or replace with runit etc etc…

Like all WeeDog distros it comes with all the flexible WeeDog abilities: load addon sfs or uncompressed directories on boot, upper_changes save/rollback persistence, optional w_copy2ram and so on. Hence it can be easily expanded, to however much desired, via sfs addons (or, for example, any self-contained package manager, such as static xbps from Void could be added to it or included in one of the sfs or uncompressed directory layers).

I'm planning to release a few versions of vnopm core for different sets of modules (more or less modules). For example, one release may contain just sufficient modules to boot from usb. Extra modules can be bolted on via sfs addon (layer-numbered) additional-modules releases.

ii. vmini (Void mini distro).

This is similar to above but by default includes static compile of Void's xbps package manager. Hence it is much bigger being around 60MiB. Really this is just for fun/experimenting/education. Better to employ one of rockedge's fuller builds for either commandline-only or X-windows-capable practical use.

2. A second build_lgo_rootfs script

is under development for creating WDLGO_Debian-based systems.

The first such distro, WDLGO_Focal64 was released some while back as an iso, but is now being re-designed. The original build_lgo_script also outputs dpkg_apt_multiuserPAM addon sfs modules for compatible Puppy Linux variants. Note that debootstrap is not used in this construction, so the resulting distro can be much smaller than is typical, and since it uses WDL initrd/init frugal install capabilities such builds are inherently very modular indeed (with currently up to 100 sfs module layers).

The attached image shows the directory contents of a tiny vnopm build that utilised the kernel of bionicpup32 plus only one overlayfs external module.