Have been working away adding more features to GreenBANG up to the point of shipping with Firefox. Managed to get a dynamic menu running of sorts. Switched out PcManFM for Thunar which allowed me to add mousepad [a l3afpad replacement].
Image size of course has grown to just over 800Mbs still well below ArchBang for the same form and function.
However this is where I have hit a major roadblock.
Alpine live runs purely from ram by default, this is not only makes it fast but also does not rely on external devices or storage. What does this mean in terms of performance well it is fast but having a full desktop and heavy browser also brings in the need for much more ram. While GreenBang will run at 1Gb or ram possibly less at a push, once you fire up Firefox is it soon obvious that it is not going to run unless you have would say 4Gbs or more. At 2Gbs Firefox will open but as it is then at the ram limit will it will start to crash. Could only get it stable at 4Gbs of ram.
ArchBang and Archiso use a different approach to running an iso image, mount looping image [root file system] then using copy on write to only manage changes. Only running fully from ram if there is enough to run it.
Now have two options, try and find a way of making Alpine more like Arch or find a different base that is still light and systemd free.
My first thought is Voidlinux, systemd free, musl based good package manager.
Other option is to ship GreenBang without a browser to save something like 250Mbs until I come up with a solution.
Still have a soft spot for Alpine as it does tick so many boxes but it needs something more live to be able to work and run with far less ram.
No said it was going to be easy 😉
Stay safe….