On Mon, Nov 02, 2015 at 02:38:13PM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Nov 2015 21:57:25 +0300
> Mitt Green <mitt_green@???> wrote:

> > I think we should count NetBSD here as the folks there
> > try to maintain the philosophy, keeping things simple
> > and minimal. I will write to them about it.
>
> If you can actually install a functional NetBSD, you're much more
> skilled than I. After about 4 hours playing whack-a-mole with NetBSD
> problems precluding a barely functional machine, I gave up.

It's all about hardware, as far as I could tell.
...and what your definition of functional is...
Seemed fairly simple to install NetBSD 5.x on a PIII with i845 graphics,
using broadcom gigabit ethernet (bge); I tried it because at the time,
almost all Linux distros had support for that GPU broken.

On the other hand, it did not play nice with my Acer Aspire One
(AR5007?? wireless, realtek 810?? ethernet).
> > There is also Alpine which uses BusyBox.
>
> I didn't know this. Thanks. I'll check it out.

Alpine is musl/busybox/openrc based; it feels like a lightweight knockoff
of Debian.

The developers have not said "we will *NEVER* use systemd", but have
indicated that they do not consider it a good direction for Alpine's
init.
(In addition, systemd uses glibc features incompatible with musl,
the musl maintainer says systemd is broken by design, and the systemd
developers certainly aren't interested in doing any ports.)

> > There is also Puppy/Quirky
> > (http://bkhome.org/news/?viewDetailed=00114).
>
> The last time I used Puppy it was a different kind of Linux: Not much
> available software: Its claim to fame is it could run in tiny RAM
> situations. But you wouldn't run your business on it.

Puppy?
Not much available software?

It has a program or two for nearly every possible use included, though
they're usually the lightweight ones.
For example: how many distros have an audio editor (mhwaveedit) on the
livecd, along with a spreadsheet (gnumeric), wordprocessor (abiword),
and accounting program (gnucash, homebank)?

However, yes, software off CD is a rather patchy business: there's usually
some way to get "native" packages from the "host" distro if there is one,
and then PPM has a smallish selection of favorites and one-off requests.

Of course, Quirky doesn't have a real 'host' distro; it is (was?) built
from T2, which is a source-based distro not many people have heard of.

HTH,
Isaac Dunham