Swift Linux 0.1.2 is now available

[Posted August 24, 2011 by ris]

From:		Jason Hsu <jhsu802701-AT-jasonhsu.com>
To:		debian-derivatives-AT-lists.debian.org
Subject:		Swift Linux 0.1.2 is now available!
Date:		Sun, 21 Aug 2011 09:48:29 -0500
Message-ID:		<20110821094829.53cb2343.jhsu802701@jasonhsu.com>

Swift Linux 0.1.2 (based on antiX Linux M11) is now available at http://www.swiftlinux.org. There
are two plain vanilla editions (Diet Swift Linux and Regular Swift Linux) and three special
editions (Taylor Swift Linux, Minnesota Swift Linux, and Chicago Swift Linux).

Swift Linux is lightweight, user-friendly, and fully compatible with the large Debian software
repository. No other distro can compete with Swift Linux on all three of these criteria. If you
wish that Puppy Linux had a large software repository, or if you wish that Linux Mint could be as
lightweight as Puppy Linux, then this is the distro for you.

Swift Linux gives that old computer a new lease on life! Windows XP support ends on April 8, 2014.
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a new computer or slowing down your old computer with a
costly and bloated "upgrade", make the REAL UPGRADE to Swift Linux.

P.S. Swift Linux NEEDS more developers! The version control system is GitHub
(https://github.com/swiftlinux), and the bug/goal tracker is Launchpad.net
(https://launchpad.net/swiftlinux). I have refactored the source code so that each major function
has its own repository (instead of cramming everything into one repository). I have implemented
Python scripts for transforming Diet Swift Linux into Regular Swift Linux and the special editions.
There are even Python scripts that automatically generate scripts for building Regular Swift Linux
and the special editions.

--
Jason Hsu
Founder and lead developer of Swift Linux (http://www.swiftlinux.org)

Swift Linux 0.1.2 is now available

Posted Aug 25, 2011 5:49 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (2 responses)

Hmm, Looks like yet another Linux distribution aimed at old computers that lacks the one thing some old computers need: ability to initiate installation from a floppy. (Of course doing the entire installation from a ton of floppies is impractical these days, the installer should then be able to continue with CD or network). Like the one Pentium laptop I have that I would like to use because it has a quite nice keyboard. It has a working CD drive, but I have not discovered any way to make it boot off it (yes, bootmanagers have been tried).

Swift Linux 0.1.2 is now available

Posted Aug 29, 2011 20:41 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (1 responses)

Maybe somebody could make a floppy that would allow booting from any CD or a USB drive? That may be an interesting project. I think GRUB2 has most of the stuff that would be needed, including USB and ATA support.

Swift Linux 0.1.2 is now available

Posted Sep 7, 2011 13:09 UTC (Wed) by etienne (guest, #25256) [Link]

The problem (booting from CDROM) is that the floppy bootloader has to leave a TSR(1) (a BIOS driver to simulate an El-Torito(2) disk) in memory after it has transfered the control to the CDROM bootloader.
That ATAPI driver cannot be written in protected mode, like the GRUB2 driver is.
IMO only one bootloader can do what is needed.

(1) Terminate and Stay Resident, i.e. an interrupt handler in real mode with its code below the 1 Mbyte barrier.
(2) The way to boot a CDROM is to simulate a BIOS "El-Torito" disk