Giovanni's blog

Pokey Linux is a platform for developing many single-application OSes, using the fewest resources possible. It is of course a reference to the Poky tool in Yocto, and the Earthbound character for the 1995 SNES game. While I have read about Yocto for years, I just thought it was a convenient and funny mnemonic way to recall a tool. While I haven't developed any code for it, it aims to be a repository of binaries that one can search and download, but also locate the package dependencies and the Yocto methods for creating it (in other words, non-technical users can work their way from a GUI-based software manager like Synaptic or Cubic , and see the steps taken to develop it, or perhaps just a few steps to make a modification). I realized this might be a better approach to indecision, as indecision of what single application OS to develop first is besides the point. Someone might want a binary with just VLC, or Thunderbird, or Midori, and nothing else (and of course, a GUI for the ...

 A brief follow up to my previous post , "The State of Stateless Linux (And the Future of Solar Computing)" is about the technology industry as a whole. Obviously, money drives product development - anticipated revenue streams from new products. But sometimes newer is just cheaper materials, rather than a new feature, which of course, isn't always a bad thing, since the savings can be passed down to the consumer.  In the Qualcomm case, The UNO Q isn't really innovative in terms of features. It might be a cash cow if Raspberry Pi wants to get out of the consumer division and only focus on corporate/industry customers. That too, isn't always a bad thing- serving consumers where a former company is unable or less willing. After all, Qualcomm has a large patent portfolio, and wouldn't need to outsource every thing or anything. This is the same Qualcomm that wanted to make a bid on Intel to buy them  out, however Intel  & The U.S had " other plans. " ...

The title is more of a gag on the other parodied State of the Union addresses, like State of the Onion by Perl Developer Larry Wall:  https://www.perl.com/pub/2006/09/21/onion.html/ Stateless applications, or even machines, may involve some amount of storage, even if it is not local. The purpose of stateless systems may have diverged with increasing options/capabilities, but its adoption in embedded systems can still have a lot of utility. https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/stateful-vs-stateless A stateless application may comprise only one part of a lightweight system, whereas the rest of the kernel and OS might have stateful applications. What about Stateless OSes? Depending on the need, such as a LiveCD/USB, a stateless OS isn't going to save info on ROM, but it can serve a useful purpose such as on PuppyLinux, which boots into RAM and allows a persistent storage option. One theory is that developing a new, lightweight system might be easier to select off-th...