Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop • Hacker News Board

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#171

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 12:42 AM UTC

oso2k wrote: post #164

jacquesm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for that comment, I did not realize Pi Zero and Pi Zero 2W worked with TCL. I am brewing an application for that environment right now so this may just save the day and make my life a lot easier. Have you tried video support for the Pi specific cams under TCL?

I don't know about CSI cameras. My use case for TCL doesn't require a CSI camera. But it looks like others have made a CSI camera work: https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,26713.0.html I recommend asking on that forum. Folks are helpful.

Thank you once more!

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#172

Post by embedding-shape » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 1:15 AM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #168

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #154

Tiny Core Linux has a version for Raspberry Pis called piCore [0] that I wish more people would look at, because it loads itself entirely into RAM and does not touch the SD card at all after that until and unless you explicitly tell it to. Phenomenal for those low powered servers you just want to leave on and running some tiny batch of cronjobs [1] or something for months or years at a time without worrying too much…

"Tiny Core Linux has a version for Raspberry Pis called piCore [0] that I wish more people would look at, because it loads itself entirely into RAM and does not touch the SD card at all after that until and unless you explicitly tell it to." Before RPI existed, I always made filesystem images for USB sticks in NetBSD so that writes never touched "disk" ("diskless"). This allows me to remove the USB stick after boot,…

There is (at least) two different groups of people using Raspberry PI. One of them are completely new Linux users who need a ton of help and resources to understand enough so they can achieve what they're trying to do. Raspbian/Raspberry Pi OS, even with their faults, is probably the better option for those people, as the environment and context very much takes first time users into account.

NetBSD and Tiny Core Linux, even with all their benefits, is a harder experience to get into if you haven't already dipped your toes into Linux, and doesn't have the same wide community and boundless online resources.

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#173

Post by lysace » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 1:18 AM UTC

debo_ wrote: post #151

throwaway984393 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's big demand to mitm users of an extremely small and limited distribution from 2008?

I swear to god. Won't somebody think of the yaks.

And their shavers.

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#174

Post by accrual » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 1:32 AM UTC

Could such a distro support my i486-DX4-100 system with 64MB of RAM? I've been looking for something other than Win95, NT4, and OpenBSD 6.8 to run on this box. :)

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#175

Post by perching_aix » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 2:29 AM UTC

maccard wrote: post #17

trollbridge wrote: post #9

Not to disrespect this, but it used to be entirely normal to have a GUI environment on a machine with 2MB of RAM and a 40MB disk. Or 128K of ram and 400 kb disk for that matter.

A single 1920x1080 framebuffer (which is a low resolution monitor in 2025 IMO) is 2MB. Add any compositing into the mix for multi window displays and it literally doesn’t fit in memory.

More like 6.2+ MB, or at least I'd sure hope that a FHD resolution is paired with at least a 24 bit (8 bpc) SDR color. And then there's the triple buffered vsync at play, so it's really more like 18.6+ MB.

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#176

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 2:33 AM UTC

teamonkey wrote: post #152

mrits wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a 320x200 6bit color depth wasn't exactly a pleasure to use. I think the games could double the res in certain mode (was it called 13h?)

You might be thinking of DOS mode 13h, which was VGA 320x200, 8 bits per pixel.

[deleted]

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#177

Post by perching_aix » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

snek_case wrote: post #64

maccard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single 1920x1080 framebuffer (which is a low resolution monitor in 2025 IMO) is 2MB. Add any compositing into the mix for multi window displays and it literally doesn’t fit in memory.

I had a 386 PC with 4MB of RAM when I was a kid, and it ran Windows 3.1 with a GUI, but that also had a VGA display at 640x480, and only 16-bit color (4 bits per pixel). So 153,600 bytes for the frame buffer.

> and only 16-bit color (4 bits per pixel).

The "high color" (16 bit) mode was 5:6:5 bits per channel, so 16 bits per pixel.

> So 153,600 bytes for the frame buffer.

And so you're looking at 614.4 KB (600 KiB) instead.

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#178

Post by fsagx » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 2:52 AM UTC

lukan wrote: post #161

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #154

Tiny Core Linux has a version for Raspberry Pis called piCore [0] that I wish more people would look at, because it loads itself entirely into RAM and does not touch the SD card at all after that until and unless you explicitly tell it to. Phenomenal for those low powered servers you just want to leave on and running some tiny batch of cronjobs [1] or something for months or years at a time without worrying too much…

"Phenomenal for those low powered servers you just want to leave on and running some tiny batch of cronjobs [1] or something for months or years at a time without worrying too much about wear on the SD card itself rendering the whole installation moot." Yes, this is exactly what I want, except I need some simple node servers running, which is not so ultra light. Would you happen to know, if this still all works withi…

on a pi?

You can run nodejs fine on a pi with "Raspberry Pi OS Lite". In the configs, look for "Overlay File System" and enable it on the boot partition and main partition. The pi will boot from the sd card and run entirely in ram.

Be sure to run something to clear your logs occasionally or reboot once in a while or you'll run out of RAM. Still, get a quality sd card and power supply. You can get years out of a setup like this.

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#179

Post by girvo » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 3:02 AM UTC

nurettin wrote: post #144

girvo wrote: post #143

I used to run Puppy Linux and then TCL (and its predecessor DSL) on a super old Pentium 3 laptop with like 700mb of RAM or something. Made it actually usable!

That's a ton of ram for a pIII

Yeah I’m pretty certain it had been upgraded and with mismatched sticks to boot! Very weird hand me down laptop

Re: Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

#180

Post by jwrallie » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 3:42 AM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #167

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #154

Tiny Core Linux has a version for Raspberry Pis called piCore [0] that I wish more people would look at, because it loads itself entirely into RAM and does not touch the SD card at all after that until and unless you explicitly tell it to. Phenomenal for those low powered servers you just want to leave on and running some tiny batch of cronjobs [1] or something for months or years at a time without worrying too much…

Alpine also has a lesser known RPi build on their download page; by using musl instead of glibc the difference in size and resources used compared to regular distros is huge as well. https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/

I can vouch for it, I had an RPi that was translating a serial port to TCP/IP in a difficult to access location, and it stayed doing its duty for years, Alpine is very solid.