MiNT and vanilla ST(e)

[Yves Pelletier <ypelletier@cmc.aes.doe.ca>]

I've been trying to promote MiNT among the user group I belong to.
Many of the users own small systems, often with a small hard drive,
and rarely with much memory. They don't really care about networking,
or Unix-style multitasking per se. But I do think that they might go
for a better file system like minixfs; the only problem being that
MiNT 1.12, minixfs, and a minixfs-compatible file selector would
gobble a third to a half of the memory of a typical ST/STe...
The MiNT binary has really grown in size since MiNT 0.95...

So, I was wondering if it would be feasible without too much trouble,
to come up with a stripped down version of MiNT (MiNT-Lite, as it
were...) for small systems.  The way I envision it, it would have the
facilities needed to run minixfs, but after that, the aim would be to
have the smallest possible kernel. Compatibility with other MiNT-aware
software is not really an issue, since the target audience would be
likely to be using almost only GEM and ROM-TOS applications. They
could always switch to the full-featured MiNT if/when they need to and
have access to a large enough machine.

I considered the idea of using MiNT 0.95 as a sort of MiNT-Lite, but a
stripped down MiNT 1.12 would probably be less buggy and more
streamlined. 

What's the feeling out there on this?

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Yves Pelletier                             ypelletier@cmc.aes.doe.ca
Section analyse et pronostic     
Centre Meteorologique Canadien             Not a CMC spokesman
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