I’ve always been a fan of extremely small Linux installs. Back when I first started using computers, I didn’t have access to great hardware. In the early 2000s I was using Pentium133 and eventually a Pentium III based system and I remember running floppy Linux (live boot off a floppy disk) and DSL (damn small Linux) in attempts to maximize the performance of the hardware I had.
Running Linux on a tiny ESP32 board just blows my mind!
Hey! My first venture into the Unix-like world was on a Pentium 133 gifted to me by my 2nd cousin. He introduced me to the open source world via OpenBSD. OpenBSD will always hold a special place in my heart but I absolutely eat up anything and everything open source.
It’s been done on a 8bit microcontroller, he did use a hack to get around the MMU, but you can run Linux on an Arduino
I remember using one called crunch bang on my 1.6 ghz Sempron machine.
Crunchbang was my JAM around 2010ish. Ran it on my old Thinkpad T23 and then T42. What a great project. I went looking for it a couple months back but it’s no longer maintained. I’ve just switched back to Arch and I’m happy enough with that.
As other OS’s continue to bloat up on hardware requirements, Linux takes new levels of the “low ground” with hardware footprint that runs on an amazing assortment of devices.
I remember being similarly blown away by the Pi in terms of its form factor and simplicity, then again with the Steam Deck in how it is really bringing Linux gaming forward from tiny niche titles all the way up to new AAA releases.
I remember trying DSL or Puppy, but even decade-old hardware can still run nicely with XFCE or KDE environments these days. It’s awesome
Does Linux no longer require an MMU to work? Or do the recent ESP32 boards implement some kind of IOMMU?
This article says it works with a risc-v vm of some kind to implement an mmu.
The article OP linked uses this code which doesn’t seem to implement an emulator, though?
Afaik you can’t run a full OS so I’m not sure what OP is talking about.
I remember seeing one post of someone running Linux on an ESP32 by writing a RISC-V emulator and then using that to set up a Linux virtual machine. As usual when it comes to running Linux through forbidden black magic, it’s using a project by Fabrice Bellard. It’s super slow and practically useless, but it works.
There’s μClinux which is an old fork that does run on devices without an MMU, but that’s stuck on kernel 2.6 I believe.
For all intents and purposes, FreeRTOS is a full operating system, though.
just started using a pine time watch, freeRTOS and its derivatives are awesome.
