Re: [gentoo-dev] Resurrecting "Project Dolphin"

[Tomasz B Mloduchowski]

On Sat, 14 Oct 2006, Benjamin Judas wrote:
> Hello folks,
>
> I took the decision to reanimate "Project Dolphin". Dolphin was an
> experimental minimal CD similar to Grmbl aimed at semi-professionals and
> professionals to help repair broken systems or minimize data-loss.
>
> Opposites to the official Gentoo-Minimal-CDs it contained more software and
> also a working gcc (the idea behind that was to provide a quickly available
> distcc-host by simply bootng any additional machines in a network with the
> dolphin CD).
>

Hmm.. what about a minimal-media like system which could exploit unionfs 
and provide similar functionality to DSL (Damn Small Linux)?

I came to enjoy the DSL extensibility, yet, as a gentoo user/veteran feel 
that their packaging system is done, well, not right.

If a minimal system provided tools usually expected from Gentoo 
installation (portage/sandbox), it might be able to merge binary packages 
outside the core configuration into tmpfs, as well as be able 
to build new packages to tailor everyone's specific needs.

It is well within the spirit of Gentoo, as it will offer the users the
ultimate flexibility, and it can be implemented by freezing the portage 
tree for the release which was used to build the core packages.

imagine users just putting binary packages onto "mygentoo/" directory on 
liveCD/liveUSB, as well as being able to build new packages, limited only 
in the amount of RAM availiable, as the binaries would be unpacked there.

And, equally easily, a user could take the running system and repack new 
readonly squashfs store from large packages they wish to keep on their 
media

Such specialized livemedia could be useful for advanced users trying to 
setup gentoo-based multimedia kiosks, demonstrations etc.


Tomasz Mloduchowski,
MIT Media Lab: Tangible Media Group
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