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

tinycorelinux.net

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

#231

Post by cess11 »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #196
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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,…

I actually considered NetBSD for an old 32 bit box yesterday, so I'm somewhat wise to this world. My first experience with ramdisk operating systems was Puppy Linux back in the early 2010s. Ultimately I'm probably going with OpenBSD for that box. But, NetBSD ISOs are much heavier than TCL ISOs, and so while I'm sure there's a way to get just what I want working in diskless mode, I'm not confident I will have any RAM…

Puppy Linux was pretty sweet back then, I used it for a Gecko machine for a few years until I got a vastly more powerful 'flat' netbook that arrived after those. It was a pretty nice gadget, though one had to have small and/or flexible fingers or the keyboard would have been a pain.

https://www.digitalreviews.net/reviews/pc/norhtec-xcore-geck...

I've noticed Puppy is still around but I have no idea whether it can still be comparable to Tiny Core.

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

#233

Post by firesteelrain »

maccard wrote: post #223
firesteelrain wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use this site https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/downloads.html And all the files are here https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/16.x/x86/release/ I posted that above in this thread. I will add that most places, forums, sites don’t deliver the hash OOB. Unless you mean like GPG but that would have came from same site. For example if you download a Packer plugin from GitHub, files and hash all comes f…

> I will add that most places, forums, sites don’t deliver the hash OOB. Unless you mean like GPG but that would have came from same site. For example if you download a Packer plugin from GitHub, files and hash all comes from same site. This thread started by talking about the site serving the download (and hash) over http. Github serves their content over https, so you're not going to be MITM'ed. There are other att…

If you want real integrity + provenance, you need a GPG-signed ISO and a public key obtained independently (or at least via HTTPS). Hashes alone aren’t a security measure; HTTPS + signatures are the modern minimum.

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

#234

Post by mananaysiempre »

perching_aix wrote: post #209
snek_case wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Windows 3.1 primarily used palette-based color modes, common modes included 16 colors (VGA/EGA) and 256 colors (SuperVGA)"

Right, so 16 color, not 16 bit color. To be frank, I wasn't aware such a mode was a thing, but it makes sense.

I recently installed NT4 (including Plus!) in an emulator with a VESA video driver, and was greatly surprised when about half of the icons that I thought of as “Windows 2000” (including the memorable “My Computer” one with the bulbous sky-blue screen) turned out to be available even there, provided a non-indexed mode. The rest were the more familliar 16-color-compatible 95/NT4 ones, making for an incongruous result overall. I guess what I want to say is that 16-color compatibility is a large part of the 95/NT4 look from which 2000 very carefully departed.

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

#235

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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,…

The point I'm making is not that NetBSD is a solution

The point I'm making is that putting the rootfs on a memory filesystem, e.g., tmpfs, mfs, etc. avoids the problem with SD cards^1

This can be done with a variety of operating systems. IMO, the advantange of the RPi hardware is that it is supported by so many different operating systems

When I want to run additional, larger programs that are not in the rootfs I have embedded into the kernel, I either (a) run them from external storage or (b) copy them to the mfs/tmpfs

It depends on how much RAM I have available

1. There are probably other ways to avoid the problem, too

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

#236

Post by marttt »

jaypatelani wrote: post #225
marttt wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the size of your "diskless" NetBSD installation, and how fast does it boot? As compared to TC, the "out of the box" NetBSD images contain many things I wouldn't need, so customizing it has been a recurring thought, but oh well. The documentation and careful modularity is, obviously, a huge bonus of NetBSD in that regard (even an end-user like me could do some interesting modifications of the kernel solely by r…

Check this https://smolbsd.org/#about

This appears to be new to me. Very interesting, many thanks for sharing!

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

#237

Post by M95D »

jacquesm wrote: post #118
taylodl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too! And the GUI was only a 40KB distribution and was waaaaaay better than Windows 3.0!

And incredibly responsive compared to the operatings systems of even today. Imagine that: 30 years of progress to end up behind where we were. Human input should always run at the highest priority in the system, not the lowest.

That ended with Win9x. It was the last OS where the mouse and keyboard inputs were processed as hardware interrupts.

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

#238

Post by dotancohen »

t_mahmood wrote: post #159
Aurornis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive experimented with several small distros for this when doing cross platform development. In my experience, by the time you’re compiling and running code and installing dev dependencies on the remote machine, the size of the base OS isn’t a concern. I gained nothing from using smaller distros but lost a lot of time dealing with little issues and incompatibilities. This won’t win me any hacker points, but now if I n…

Valid points, completely forgot about that part, and even with installation script, I manage to waste a good amount of time downloading and setting things up. Question, I use VirtualBox, but I feel it's kind a laggy sometimes, What do you use? Any suggestion on performance improvements?

Is docker valid for your use case?

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

#239

Post by dotancohen »

LeFantome wrote: post #228
dotancohen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNS queries randomly failing: https://purplecarrot.co.uk/post/2021-09-04-does_alpine-resol...

Not an issue anymore

Really? I seen to remember this being considered "not a bug" by some narrow view of the issue.

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

#240

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

marttt wrote: post #186
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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,…

What's the size of your "diskless" NetBSD installation, and how fast does it boot? As compared to TC, the "out of the box" NetBSD images contain many things I wouldn't need, so customizing it has been a recurring thought, but oh well. The documentation and careful modularity is, obviously, a huge bonus of NetBSD in that regard (even an end-user like me could do some interesting modifications of the kernel solely by r…

In 2011, TCL was 10MB

Around that time the NetBSD kernels with embedded rootfs filesystem I was making were around 17MB

Today, TCL is 23MB

The NetBSD kernels with embedded rootfs I'm using today are around 33MB

That size can be reduced of course

I don't monitor the boot process on RPi with serial console, I only connect after tinysshd is running, so I don't pay close attention to boot speed. It's fast enough

TCL appears to be aimed at users that prefer a binary distribution; also it provides GUI by default

I prefer to compile from source and I only use textmode hence NetBSD is more suitable for me than TCL

For someone who does not want to compile anything from source, it is possible to "customise" (replace) the rootfs of a NetBSD install image with another rootfs. It is not documented anywhere that I'm aware of but I have done it many times

I use a very minimal userland. I guarantee few if any HN readers would be satisfied with it. If I need additional programs I either (a) mount an external drive and run the programs from external storage, e.g., via chroot, or (b) copy them from an external drive into mfs or tmpfs

It depends on how much RAM I have

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