I’m looking for a really really small linux distribution or process of making my own that’s sole purpose is to get an air application to launch full screen and stay there; Essentially I’m building a home kitchen computer that runs entirely as an AIR app.
I have looked into using windows xp; and windows xp embedded but they pose so many issues I figured I’d try modern linux.
I have also seen TinyCore Linux which looks interestingly small but not sure what issues that poses in regards to running AIR and “hardware” accelerated display. I’ve also thought about stripping down an Ubuntu installation but I’m sure somebody must have done this already; google is just failing me right now…
I’m also interested in running an “embedded” version of say android and running the air app on some arm-based hardware again; with just the AIR runtimes only – although this is less preferred as it’s more complex.
I’m also hooking this up to a touch screen monitor (not yet arrived) so I’ll need to hunt down or write some drivers for translating the touch events into something AIR can understand… (this was my main intention for using windows in that all the drivers will just work).
What I’m after
- Minified Linux kernel with JUST the drivers for the box I need
- X Display with accelerated graphics support (Doesn’t have to be X if AIR can run on a frame buffer?)
- Running a Full screen AIR application (simple enough)
- Ability to write back to the filesystem (enough support for AIR)
- SSH Access for remote control
- Samba for updating the filesystem (easier to maintain the system)
- Touch screen support (3M Ex III I think…)
- Audio support
Don’t need
- Don’t need any window manager or any other GUI tools unless required by AIR
- Don’t need any toolbars or file managers or anything; The AIR app is the “OS”
- Don’t need any package managers or repos
- Don’t need multi user or logging in; everything can just run as an unprivileged account
- Don’t need to
I don’t mind hand crafting the filesystem and configs if that makes it easier; I’m mainly looking for a “filesystem” that is as tiny as possible that I can just plop my AIR app into and write some scripts to get it to start when the X server starts
Thanks,
Chris
Ended up going with Tiny Core. Very tiny and quick to boot up. You can also write extensions for it and you don’t have a persistent drive which allows you to just switch the thing off without worry that it’s going to break something — exactly what you need in a kitchen :-D.