Re: [gentoo-embedded] Building a mini desktop on uclibc

[Peter S. Mazinger]

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Stéphane Lacasse wrote:

> Salut René,
>
> You may want to tke a look at Tiny X which is a small stripped down
> version of X.  I throw this just like that since I'm not sure what your
> goal is...  is it to get the smallest size possible regardless of
> compatibility, or if keeping things running as normal important.  From
> my own experiences with uClibc, you often have to do compromises.  If
> everything would compile ok with uClibc, I'm sure pretty much everything
> would be built using it.  It does compile smaller binaries and there is
> a cost to that.

alternatively look at modular X (currently masked)

>
> Goog luck and keep us informed of your progresses.  I always like things
> that squeezes the most out of ressources.
>
> Le jeudi 15 septembre 2005 à 21:50 -0400, René Rhéaume a écrit :
> > I am trying to build a mini desktop on a uclibc-based system. At
> > first, I tried to get XFCE running but got into serious GTK+ issues, I
> > broke ncurses during an update and had to start over. With this in
> > mind, I separated the plan into three phases, get the smallest desktop
> > with a basic set of applications, add applications and build other
> > desktop environments (neither GNOME nor KDE, as they are very big).

XFCE runs fine for me, GPE would also be an alternative (bugs.g.o has a 
tarball w/ ebuilds), although it also relies on glib2. Currently I am
testing a better iconv() replacement/patch for glib2 that could solve the 
glib2 dillemma, but someone will have to apply it to the tree (or we 
create virtual/glib2 or glib2-uclibc (w/ PROVIDE: glib2)

Peter

> >
> > Basic applications:
> >     - window manager: IceWM, patched to removed dependency on iconv
> > (bug #101032)
> >     - X11 terminal: patched rxvt and rxvt-uncode (bug #104043)
> >     - text editor: nedit
> >     - PDF reader: patched xpdf (dependency reduction, TrueType
> > auto-hinting, experimental shared library reducing dramatically the
> > binary size (tbz2 went from 2594Kb to 650Kb))
> >     - IRC client: nebula and BitchX (~x86, no RPATHS please)
> >     - file manager: patched xplore (bug #106132)
> >     - web browser
> >     - music player
> >
> > The web browser issue is pretty interesting. Dillo heavily depends on
> > the system iconv, something a Gentoo stable uclibc 0.9.27 does not
> > provide. On the other hand, Gecko has its own iconv code but almost
> > all Mozilla-based applications depend on GTK+. I would like to have
> > minimo.
> >
> > As for the music player, I cannot use neither beep-media-player nor
> > xmms, as they depend  on GTK+. GTK+ 1.2 "hello world" programs I found
> > in the GTK+ tutorial simply segfault. Cursed GNU's Not Unix Image
> > Manipulation Program Tool Kit Plus.
> >
> > Do you have alternative program suggestions? How can I fix GTK?
> >
>

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Peter S. Mazinger <ps dot m at gmx dot net>           ID: 0xA5F059F2
Key fingerprint = 92A4 31E1 56BC 3D5A 2D08  BB6E C389 975E A5F0 59F2

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