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

#71

Post by haunter » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 4:47 PM UTC

Another small one is the xwoaf (X Windows On A Floppy) rebuild project 4.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20240901115514/https://pupngo.dk...

Showcase video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8or3ehc5YDo

iso https://web.archive.org/web/20240901115514/https://pupngo.dk...

2.1mb, 2.2.26 kernel

>The forth version of xwoaf-rebuild is containing a lot of applications contained in only two binaries: busybox and mcb_xawplus. You get xcalc, xcalendar, xfilemanager, xminesweep, chimera, xed, xsetroot, xcmd, xinit, menu, jwm, desklaunch, rxvt, xtet42, torsmo, djpeg, xban2, text2pdf, Xvesa, xsnap, xmessage, xvl, xtmix, pupslock, xautolock and minimp3 via mcb_xawplus. And you get ash, basename, bunzip2, busybox, bzcat, cat, chgrp, chmod, chown, chroot, clear, cp, cut, date, dd, df, dirname, dmesg, du, echo, env, extlinux, false, fdisk, fgrep, find, free, getty, grep, gunzip, gzip, halt, head, hostname, id, ifconfig, init, insmod, kill, killall, klogd, ln, loadkmap, logger, login, losetup, ls, lsmod, lzmacat, mesg, mkdir, mke2fs, mkfs.ext2, mkfs.ext3, mknod, mkswap, mount, mv, nslookup, openvt, passwd, ping, poweroff, pr, ps, pwd, readlink, reboot, reset, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, sed, sh, sleep, sort, swapoff, swapon, sync, syslogd, tail, tar, test, top, touch, tr, true, tty, udhcpc, umount, uname, uncompress, unlzma, unzip, uptime, wc, which, whoami, yes, zcat via busybox. On top you get extensive help system, install scripts, mount scripts, configure scripts etc.

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

#72

Post by the8472 » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #53

jerrythegerbil wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it in GPU RAM, you need GPU drivers. For example, NVIDIA GPU drivers are typically around 800M-1.5G. That math actually goes wildly in the opposite direction for an optimization argument.

Doesn't the UEFI firmware map a GPU framebuffer into the main address space "for free" so you can easily poke raw pixels over the bus? Then again the UEFI FB is only single-buffered, so if you rely on that in lieu of full-fat GPU drivers then you'd probably want to layer some CPU framebuffers on top anyway.

well, if you poke framebuffer pixels directly you might as well do scanline racing.

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

#73

Post by noufalibrahim » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

In around 2002, I got my hands on an old 386 which I was planning to use for teaching myself things. I was able to breathe life into it using MicroLinux. Two superformatted 1.44" floppy disks and the thing booted. Basic kernel, 16 colour X display, C compiler and Editor.

I don't know if there are any other options for older machines other than stripped down Linux distros.

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

#74

Post by projektfu » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

samtheprogram wrote: post #65

ifh-hn wrote: post #43

I've used many of these small Linux distros. I used to have Tiny Core in a VM for different things. I also like SliTaz: http://slitaz.org/en , and Slax too: https://www.slax.org/ Oh and puppy Linux, which I could never get into but was good for live CDs: https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/ And there's also Alpine too.

Wow, Slax is still around and supports Debian now too? Thanks for sharing.

I used to use it during the netbook era, was great for that.

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

#75

Post by Someone » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

gardnr wrote: post #56

I love lightweight distros. QNX had a "free as in beer" distro that fit on a floppy, with Xwindows and modem drivers. After years of wrangling with Slackware CDs, it was pretty wild to boot into a fully functional system from a floppy.

> QNX had a "free as in beer" distro that fit on a floppy, with Xwindows and modem drivers.

I don’t think that had the X Windows system. https://web.archive.org/web/19991128112050/http://www.qnx.co... and https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-chat&m=103030933111004 confirm that. It ran the Photon microGUI Windowing System (https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0SP1.update/com.qnx....)

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

#76

Post by dayeye2006 » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

ifh-hn wrote: post #43

I've used many of these small Linux distros. I used to have Tiny Core in a VM for different things. I also like SliTaz: http://slitaz.org/en , and Slax too: https://www.slax.org/ Oh and puppy Linux, which I could never get into but was good for live CDs: https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/ And there's also Alpine too.

wondering what's your typical usage for those small distros?

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

#77

Post by LorenDB » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

ifh-hn wrote: post #43

I've used many of these small Linux distros. I used to have Tiny Core in a VM for different things. I also like SliTaz: http://slitaz.org/en , and Slax too: https://www.slax.org/ Oh and puppy Linux, which I could never get into but was good for live CDs: https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/ And there's also Alpine too.

Puppy was the first Linux distro I ever tried since it was such a small download (250ish MB) and I had limited bandwidth. Good memories.

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

#78

Post by bobmcnamara » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 4:58 PM 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.

It's so much fun working with systems with more pixels than ram though. Manually interleaving interrupts. What joy.

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

#79

Post by throwaway173738 » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #53

jerrythegerbil wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it in GPU RAM, you need GPU drivers. For example, NVIDIA GPU drivers are typically around 800M-1.5G. That math actually goes wildly in the opposite direction for an optimization argument.

Doesn't the UEFI firmware map a GPU framebuffer into the main address space "for free" so you can easily poke raw pixels over the bus? Then again the UEFI FB is only single-buffered, so if you rely on that in lieu of full-fat GPU drivers then you'd probably want to layer some CPU framebuffers on top anyway.

Yes if you have UEFI.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 06, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

echoangle wrote: post #30

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.

Do you really need the framebuffer in RAM? Wouldn't that be entirely in the GPU RAM?

[deleted]