If you want an OS for a low spec machine there are some out there as you have found (puppy is one set) so "make an OS for a resource-limited machine" would definitely be more work than most people would consider investing.johnywhy wrote:My goal is to make an OS for a resource-limited machine. Might be trickly, as my HD isn't very big, and i want to have flexibility. Your approach means i'm stuck with a fixed number of OS's, and if i have fewer OS's, then i'm wasting my limited space with unused partitions.
If you are "stuck with a fixed number of OS's" I would simply choose wisely and test quickly, if OS does not fit your needs move on to the next OS. And Garry has pointed out the merits of using virtualization to test/use other OS's, but if your resources are limited this may not be a viable option. I usually keep a set of virtual machines ready for when I need to do some quick tests and do not want to re-boot into other OS.
Your machine is very likely UEFI otherwise "legacy boot" would not be an option. You would need to have your setting decided before installing any OS at all, you cannot (or should I say should not) change this after you have started populating your HDD with OS's, I have Win10 on my laptop and 4 Linux OS's and room to expand, I do not have so much HDD space there and usually give each OS between 5 and 25 Gb depending on the OS requirenments.johnywhy wrote:i can't tell if my machine is EFI, cuz windows says i'm booting with "legacy". If i go into BIOS, i don't even see EFI anyplace, i only see "Legacy USB Booting: enabled/disabled". If i disable it, then i lose keyboard control of Mint's grub menu. weird!
My UEFI machine (Dell laptop) is definitely easier (for me) to install/remove different OS's as each retains control of it's own grub with an entry in /boot/efi/EFI/ although some UEFI implementations are not so helpful to other users and they need to do some workarounds to get their desired set-up.
I prefer to keep a little distance betweeen OS's and would not maintain an OS which is installed to the userspace of another OS although i have used wubi installations which have installed to the windows partitions but these were for testing and removed as soon as I was done. I can't really say if there are risks but I guess any files contained within a windows system could be compromised by the OS's poor security (virus/malware) although in most cases I imagine the damage would be limited.johnywhy wrote:do you think the folder-based installs is risky, not possible with certain OS's, or you just don't like it?
THX
And like Garry also said "There is only 1 Linux distro that is Debian" and I (nearly) always have a stable and testing version installed on my machines for using/testing various things. I also use derivatives like Q4OS (also good for low resource machines) SparkyLinux and others, if full desktop is needed then Xfce/Lxde/LxQt/trinity OS's are what I would usually go for but there are others that are even lower in resource usage but you have to sacrifice ease of use and so I don't usually strip down that far.