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[Bill Hacker]

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Chris Pressey wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 16:08:46 +0800
> Bill Hacker <wbh at xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>Software needs to ship on a USB stick these days, maybe
>>with a 5$ ccd camera thrown in.

Picked up a Kingston 1GB USB today - earmarked for DFLY
research on that issue.

I am sure that I can get it into 256, not sure about 128.

At current trends, 256-512 would be 'good enough',
and larger would allow a good deal of workspace
for stored docs and such..

>>
>>Better chance of raising funds for the project, also.
>>Newbies these days don't buy the books - they can't read.
>>
>>Free, as in not for profit, *costs covered*, rather than free,
>>as in go hungry in order to contribute equipment as well as time,
>>would be a nice change to the model.
> 
> 
> Interesting thought...  I know we've come within inches of successfully
> building a DragonFly "LivePenDrive"; I think the problem was that, once
> the overhead of the filesystem was factored in, it was just slightly
> bigger than 128M.  Trimming it down slightly would surely make it
> feasible.
> 

Keep in mind that - realistically - it is probably 6-10 months out
(my personal guess) before DFLY is ready to do 'serious' chasing
of 'market penetration' (if such term applies to F/OSS).

512MB - 1 GB are already quite affordable, 2 GB on the shelves,
(4 GB are usually CF-size micro-HDD).

>>But no - it needn't be.  One floppy, then go over the wire...
> 
> Just to split hairs, it's not exactly the same thing - you'd have to
> keep the system image entirely in memory for it to be "Live" in the
> sense of "I can play with it without installing it to my hdd."

ACK, as in QNX old demo.  Connectivity, GUI, browser, and all.
That sort of item (1.44 MB) is really a pure 'demo' -
*Very* selective strip-down. Oh - you could do a CLI-only
for an embedded app in less than that - but nothing that
would be attractive to today's users.

> 
> Of course, most modern machines do have enough memory to do that.

AFAIK 256 is pretty standard in commodity boxen, 512 'soon', 1 GB
no longer just 'power' users.

Again - cast the projection out about 6+ months - not just today.

> Of course, those same machines are increasingly less likely to have
> floppy drives :/

Target on USB.  Far more universal already than FDD ever were.

Bill