[HN Gopher] Tiny Core Linux 13.0 is a full Linux desktop in 22 MB
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Tiny Core Linux 13.0 is a full Linux desktop in 22 MB
Author : tsujp
Score : 244 points
Date : 2022-07-04 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.adafruit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.adafruit.com)
| yellowapple wrote:
| Tiny Core's small enough that I'll often throw the entirety of it
| in /boot or /boot/EFI on my Linux desktops as a recovery
| environment.
| jeppesen-io wrote:
| you know, that's a really clever idea
| yellowapple wrote:
| Right? It sure saved my ass more than once.
| [deleted]
| n_kr wrote:
| That sounds very useful! Do you have a writeup or any tips to
| set that up?
| marcodiego wrote:
| Please details!
|
| How can I put an image in /boot and load and run it from GRUB?
| peter303 wrote:
| Our PDP 11/34 UNIX ran on 256 KB core and 6MB disk. With room to
| run apps.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I used tiny core Linux about 10 years ago in a high security
| environment for a data wipe verification step. Worked great and
| it booted to an immutable ramdisk from a USB 2 stick in seconds.
| It was also a breeze to setup with drivers.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| > full Linux desktop
|
| > The Core Project is a highly modular based system (...) It is
| not a complete desktop nor is all hardware completely supported.
| It represents only the core needed to boot into a very minimal X
| desktop typically with wired internet access.
|
| That is not a full desktop, and the [The Core] project doesn't
| say it is.
|
| That being said the concept of "full desktop" is somewhat loaded.
| Today we have a somewhat unreasonable expectation that at least
| one, but sometimes several browsers, office suites, multimedia
| viewers and editors to be a "basic desktop".
|
| Back in the 90's people did not expect the computer to come with
| any such software applications built-in.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I expect a full desktop to manage mounting of USB devices for
| me. My awesome-wm setup doesn't do that :(. (And I know it's on
| me)
| regularfry wrote:
| > Back in the 90's people did not expect the computer to come
| with any such software applications built-in.
|
| Having a complete set of mutually compatible applications is
| literally why Linux distributions exist.
| iaaan wrote:
| The Stallman copypasta kind of explains this verbatim:
|
| > I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're
| refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've
| recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an
| operating system unto itself, but rather another free
| component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by
| the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components
| comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
|
| > Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU
| system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar
| turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today
| is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware
| that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU
| Project.
|
| > There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but
| it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the
| kernel: the program in the system that allocates the
| machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The
| kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but
| useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a
| complete operating system. Linux is normally used in
| combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system
| is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-
| called Linux distributions are really distributions of
| GNU/Linux!
| regularfry wrote:
| That's not actually what I was thinking of, but it's
| related. I was thinking more of the hard work of making
| sure you have a compatible set of library versions that
| every app in the repositories can link against, with
| whatever patches they need to make that work, to provide a
| complete working system for the user - including end user
| apps like mail clients, browsers, editors, the whole
| shebang.
| agumonkey wrote:
| maybe you're thinking about full desktop environment ?
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Today we have a somewhat unreasonable expectation that at
| least one, but sometimes several browsers, office suites,
| multimedia viewers and editors to be a "basic desktop"._
|
| Why is this considered unreasonable?
|
| I agree that is was unreasonable back in the 90s, 30 years ago,
| but we also now expect computers to come with a few TB of
| storage rather than a few GB -- times have changed.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| I reasonably agree with your assertion that times have
| changed; several of the optimizations we come to expect from
| compilers/JIT trade faster execution for more space as such
| tradeoff is often very worth it.
|
| However if you agree with the proposition of attempting to
| supply a reasonably "lean core" with extensions, if said lean
| core is too opinionated, you will, soon or later, either have
| to adapt your workflow, or workaround said lean core.
|
| I think a somewhat similar thing applies to silverblue (
| https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ ) and it's very hard to
| actually use it as intended (only using things inside
| flatpak/toolbx), without messing with the overlay system. I
| very often feel the need to replace half of the "provided"
| applications, and as such it would be in fact better if they
| were not supplied in the first place.
| passthejoe wrote:
| It is possible to remove things from the stock image. I
| haven't done it yet, but most common is to remove default
| Firefox and use Flatpak FF.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > we also now expect computers to come with a few TB of
| storage
|
| No, we don't. Modern Macbook which is overpriced elite
| computer sells with 256GB storage. There're plenty of laptops
| selling with 120GB storage.
|
| I'd argue that since we migrated from HDD to SSD, we expect
| computers to come with less storage than before. I had 200GB
| HDD in like 2005 or something like this.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| > Modern Macbook which is overpriced elite computer
|
| If you bough a overpriced elite computer, and potentially
| other parts of that ecosystem of products, why would you
| not pay for overpriced elite cloud storage as well?
|
| That is very reasonable thinking from Apple.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Modern Macbook which is overpriced elite computer sells
| with 256GB storage
|
| its just that our industry is a joke, imagine they'd sell
| cars with three wheels and carge you extra for the 4th.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| The joke is that you can't even buy the 4th wheel later
| as a add-on, you need to replace your entire car instead.
| ziddoap wrote:
| My point was that expectations have changed over time...
|
| You can get as pedantic as you want over the exact sizes,
| but someone buying a computer today expects more storage
| than someone who was buying a computer in the early 90s.
| taf2 wrote:
| I don't know... now days I think if I can run a browser that
| pretty much is a full desktop...
| HPsquared wrote:
| How much of the browser can it run though? Probably won't be
| capable of audio/video, for instance.
| soylentgraham wrote:
| Oh that would be bliss! Can it remove
| cookie/newsletter/discount/app promo popups too? :)
| a9h74j wrote:
| Extreme view: The user agent needs to be "shrunk down and
| drowned in a bathtub".
| eastbound wrote:
| Reading this, I'm wondering why we settled on those
| particular questions, as a civilization. The civilization
| next door must have a slew of "What is your address?" /
| "Record your voice!" / "Scream 'NETFLIX' to the street" /
| "Upload your fingerprint to get access to our free
| content" dialogs.
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| You can install web browsers including chromium-browser and
| firefox via the package manager.
|
| List of packages: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/13.x/x86_64/tcz/
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| The problem with this tiny projects is that you need a web
| browser. And good luck browsing the web in old PCs. You can use
| Lynx and the like, but you know what I mean.
|
| If you need second life for an old pc, It may be better to
| repurpose as server or something like that.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| >need a web browser
|
| you'd be surprised how many people here (and many FOSS
| zealots in general) live in their own little bubble of
| command-line-only existence. who eschew modern things like
| javascript and social media and only want to take part in
| that which is easily done from a text terminal.
| [deleted]
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| > And good luck browsing the web in old PCs. You can use Lynx
| and the like, but you know what I mean.
|
| Hello electron where everything is a browser :)
|
| Yes, even if your system is lean doesn't mean a lot if the
| application you're using on top still needs a lot of TFLOPs
| and GBs of fast RAM.
|
| Trying to use a 2GB 2 thread atom netbook here as a dumb
| terminal of sorts for other systems - a pain for anything
| that is not very basic limited remote shell. The closest I
| got to a "working system with browser" was cheating using
| mosh + browsh on another computer.
| whitten wrote:
| Have you tried any of the VNC class of programs?
|
| It allows a virtual screen solution to other computers,
| even servers. Effectively a private Zoom session.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Worked already smoothly around 2000 over 33.6 kbit/s
| modem. And lossless compression!
|
| I often have to think of that when we share terminals
| over Google Meet these days and it takes tens of seconds
| until the encoding artifacts of red fonts have faded away
| so text becomes reable again. 100 times more bandwidth
| for a worse experience, that must be progress...
| mappu wrote:
| _> Effectively a private Zoom session._
|
| I just wanted to let you know that this comparison
| absolutely threw me. Of course you're right, they both
| let you "screen share" but the way you applied a 2022
| metaphor to explain 90s tech made me feel a little weird
| and old.
|
| I guess nano is kind of like a private google docs.
| brazzy wrote:
| A typewriter is effectively a keyboard hardwired directly
| to a printer.
| salmo wrote:
| You kids and your new fangled nano.
|
| Back in my day it was pine and pico. We did SMTP both
| ways. And we liked it!
|
| Actually, it weirds me out that the default editor on
| most Linuxes now is a pico clone. Some don't don't even
| come with a vi out of box.
|
| I started with emacs in college because I liked LISP. But
| once I was a sysadmin, I learned vi fast because it was
| the common denominator between Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, BSD,
| Linux, etc. and I was in a group that absorbed teams that
| used all of them. ...OK, to be fair, our stuff was BSD
| :).
|
| My first instinct on a fresh/new to me host is to vi. And
| even when I type nano, I can't stop my hands from doing
| vi and get peeved. Fine 'apt install vim' or whatever.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I have Debian 11 on a 2GB laptop running Xfce and it's very
| usable. The key is to install a 32-bit distro which can be
| a bit challenging on 64-bit UEFI systems. I have a dummy
| 64-bit install just for the bootloader and then installed
| the 32-bit system alongside it.
| jcelerier wrote:
| Instead of 32-bit i686 consider x32 ABI. It uses 32 bit
| pointers (good for memory) but has access to all the x64
| registers, has SSE2 as a min. requirement, etc. which is
| great for performance - it's the best of both worlds
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| My understanding - backed by
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI - is that x32 has
| seen very little adoption and even Linux upstream has
| considered removing it. It appears to be available on
| Gentoo because of course it is, Debian if you jump
| through hoops (https://wiki.debian.org/X32Port), and some
| embedded tool chains (I'm not running yocto on my
| laptop). Are there any other accessible options?
| usr1106 wrote:
| If your hardware is not too old. I still have 2 PCs that
| don't have 64 bit support. They still run Xubuntu 16.04
| just fine, but have not upgraded or used them after that
| when out of support.
|
| Which distro offers x32? (Haven't checked, might be a
| stupid question...) I understood it was a great idea at
| the time, but implementation took a while and the world
| had moved on when it was finally ready.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Which distro offers x32?
|
| A lot of modern distros are still packaging for i686, but
| actually installing it might be a bit of a pain. I think
| your safest bet is to go with an OS like Debian that's
| sure to offer ample support for older systems, or you
| could go for broke and run a distro like
| Gentoo/Arch/NixOS that has package manifests/build
| instructions for each tool and _pray_ that nothing breaks
| (spoilers: it will).
|
| So, temper your expectations; 32-bit systems aren't a
| huge priority nowadays, but I'm certain you could put
| together a usable config if you choose the right base
| system. Or just keep the machines as they are, I'm sure
| Xubuntu still runs fine.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| x32 is different from i686
| adrianN wrote:
| You can browse the web on a ten year old machine just fine.
| srvmshr wrote:
| While clean reinstalling my macOS last month, my recovery
| partition was lost - and I booted via internet recovery to
| MacOS Mavericks.
|
| Needless to say, I couldn't even sign in with Apple ID via
| browser or app store because the world has moved on & these
| browsers can't work on modern webpages. (I had to use my
| phone concurrently to help me out with downloading rescue
| stuff & moving via USB or terminal)
| adrianN wrote:
| Ten year old software is very different from ten year old
| hardware.
| srvmshr wrote:
| The parent (you replied to) discussed the state of
| browsers
|
| _The problem with this tiny projects is that you need a
| web browser. And good luck browsing the web in old PCs
| [...]_
|
| As I can imagine now, a lot of things will not run on 10
| y.o. hardware once you get limited by the last base OS
| you could install.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| In the context of Linux, ten year old hardware is widely
| supported, and will not limit what base OS version and
| software is installable, though its capabilities might
| affect usability. We're not really discussing OS X here,
| where planned obsolescence is such a huge factor.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's not really a Linux problem as far as I can tell.
| You can install a five-minute old Debian-testing on 10
| year old hardware without too many surprises.
| pmontra wrote:
| 8.5 yo for sure and with Ubuntu. I improved it a little (32
| GB and two 1 TB SSDs) but I bet that the original 8 GB +
| HDD would be OK for browsing. Browsers got faster and that
| helps compensating sites that got slower.
| mrob wrote:
| 4GiB is plenty for browsing if you run uBlock Origin and
| disable Javascript by default.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| Well, if you don't run uBlock Origin (or bare minimum
| another less efficient tracker blocker), no amount of RAM
| can really save you once you cross the threshold of 60+
| tabs open.
| usr1106 wrote:
| If you want to save resources (and that what talking
| about 2GB machines is) you just don't keep 60+ tabs open.
| You cannot eat the cake and keep it at the same time. I
| cannot see how anyone can jump around between 60 tabs
| every day. If I have more than 10-20 tabs open after a
| working day I know that the day went in a very
| unorganized way and I have probably more open tasks than
| in the morning when I started. It happens because I have
| plenty of unused RAM on my work machine, but it's nothing
| I'd defend. Maybe a smaller machine would just force me
| to organize my work better.
|
| Bookmarks are there for organizing stuff one will need at
| some time later. Keeping tabs open does not seem to serve
| any special purpose. Unless you want to save cycles to
| render it again, but I don't remember many pages I would
| like to use frequently that even a very old PC does not
| bring up in decent time. The local weather forecast loads
| rather slowly, but that I want to reload every time I
| visit it anyway.
| glowingly wrote:
| I recently was upgraded away from those exact "old" specs
| at work, and I largely disagree. Win10 just doesn't work
| with HDDs. I'm sure the mandatory 3rd party AV doesn't
| help either. But logging in was enough of a source of
| pain, that I ended up using my iPhone with a HDMI dongle
| and a wireless accessories.
|
| It's upgraded now to an overly powerful web browsing
| machine. I'm a bit happier.
| passthejoe wrote:
| I agree. Win 10 + HDD = frustration.
| hulitu wrote:
| Win 10 even with SSD is a frustation.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| > I bet that the original 8 GB
|
| Second source data I collected from the Steam Hardware
| Survey (that being a biased group with better that
| average specs) for 2012 seems to point that the "average
| Steam user" had around 5 GB of system RAM.
|
| > HDD would be OK for browsing. Browsers got faster and
| that helps compensating sites that got slower.
|
| I just remembered this article (and that article talks
| about SSDs, not HDDs!) surprising conclusions, posted in
| HN a few days ago: https://simonhearne.com/2020/network-
| faster-than-cache/
| wongarsu wrote:
| A good $500 PC [1] 10 years ago seems to have a 2x3GHz
| Pentium, 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD. The $1000 PC [2] from
| tomshardware was a 4x3.4GHz Core i5 with 8GB RAM, a GTX 670
| and a 60GB SSD paired with a 750GB HDD.
|
| The $1000 still sounds totally adequate for surfing, office
| use and some light gaming, as long as you invest $20-$50 in
| a bigger SSD (or have some patience when starting
| software). Machines like this are still sold, they're just
| smaller and cheaper now. Even the 2012 $500 PC is probably
| fine if you upgrade the RAM, and even without that upgrade
| is not much different from some of the mini-PCs sold today
| [3]
|
| 1: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-pc-
| overclocking-...
|
| 2: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-
| overclock-be...
|
| 3: https://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/ThinkCentre/ThinkCentre_
| M70q...
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| Absolutely - I am typing this on a 2012 Windows 7 PC, 8GB
| RAM and an SSD. CPU has a Geekbench 5 single-core score
| of 400 or something, i.e. in no way fast. But surfing the
| web is snappy and the computer works fine.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| If you limit yourself to sane, 1.0 web simple pages such as
| Hacker News, sure. If you need to visit anything using
| unoptimized 100+ MB of Javascript? Good Luck.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| For a 20 year old machine, sure. But any machine that was
| decent 10 years ago should be at least okay today. My
| 2008 Thinkpad handles all but the heaviest websites
| without too much trouble, as long as I don't have too
| many tabs open at a time.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Agreed, I am using a 2009 Toshiba laptop with Pop! on it,
| I did some cheap upgrades (maxed RAM to 10GB, used a
| spare SSD to replace the old HD), it's perfectly usable.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| This is a fair point, the machine I am using as a
| reference was pretty bad at best even when it was new (a
| 2012 netbook).
| bragr wrote:
| How is hacker news a 1.0 website? It's full of JS and
| dynamic elements. It might be aping the style of 1.0 web
| but it is very much a web 2.0 site.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| > It's full of JS
|
| 152 lines of sparse JS ammounting to 5kb uncompressed?
| Not exactly what I would call "full of js".
|
| For comparison your average hasty made, JS infested
| legacy web site there embeds Moment.js - and that by
| itself is 19kb compressed.
| bragr wrote:
| Compared to the size of the site, and the features? Yeah,
| most of them involve some amount of JS. Besides, HN is
| all dynamic user generated content, that's the crux of
| web 2.0.
| pluijzer wrote:
| How I perceive it is that web 2.0 is about dynamic loaded
| content and as far as I know HN doesn't do this but loads
| static pages from a server just like ye old web 1.0 forum
| pages would do.
| bragr wrote:
| If you go off Wikipedia's definition, it's more about
| user generated content and HN is definitely that. Might
| not meet your definition of web 2.0, but it meets this
| one:
|
| >A Web 2.0 website allows users to interact and
| collaborate with each other through social media dialogue
| as creators of user-generated content in a virtual
| community. This contrasts the first generation of Web
| 1.0-era websites where people were limited to viewing
| content in a passive manner.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
| silisili wrote:
| I'm not going to argue which web it belongs to, just
| comment that that definition is a bit odd. Forums would
| fit that definition, and have existed for far longer.
| phpBB itself is over 20 years old even.
|
| I know it's all arbitrary, but it feels like there should
| probably be a better definition than the ones given.
| jl6 wrote:
| At the risk of arguing the semantics of what is
| ultimately a marketing term rather than a technical term,
| Web 1.0 did actually have JavaScript - it was usually a
| simpler, more restrained usage, with no XMLHttpRequest.
| freemint wrote:
| Even that might not work. If it came with a succinctly
| obscure Operating System you run into SSL problems.
| oynqr wrote:
| Are you trying to tell me that you can't browse the
| modern web on an Ivy Bridge-era system?
| doubled112 wrote:
| Either it's not that bad, or people are lacking patience.
|
| I have a Phenom II desktop next to me that browses the
| web just fine. Yes, even YouTube and infinite scrolling
| pages.
| tssva wrote:
| Same here. I have a Phenom II X6 desktop and it has no
| problem browsing the modern web running either Linux or
| Windows 10.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| Yes, remember that the netbook trend died in 2013. A
| netbook is a Ivy Bridge-era system.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Those were awful, especially the first gen, but I have
| fond memories of them since it was the first time young
| me could afford anything new and shaped like a laptop.
|
| The MSI Wind U100 with an Atom N270 CPU would even
| overclock. It didn't help, but it would do it.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I was on my good old 2500k until 2019. It was perfectly
| and I only upgraded because I had the itch
| hulitu wrote:
| > The problem with this tiny projects is that you need a web
| browser. And good luck browsing the web in old PCs.
|
| Browsing the web is the last thing i do on an old PC. These
| old computers are for entertainment. Modern Web is a sh*tty
| experience.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _If you need second life for an old pc, It may be better to
| repurpose as server or something like that._
|
| I'd go as far as a third life. This comment sounds like this
| is written by someone for whom Windows is not the first life
| (good for you!). To me, restoring an old PC to something
| usable day-to-day with Linux is only effective if you're
| switching away from Windows or switching away from the modern
| web.
| usrn wrote:
| Yup. Alpine's rootfs is tiny (~3mb) and if you don't need
| firmware you would probably have a desktop image around this
| size.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Alpines rootfs images don't include the kernel or any drivers
| at all, right? Since it's usually run within a container
| that's a sensible choice, but if you look at
| https://www.alpinelinux.org/downloads/ their rootfs is 2.6mb,
| but even their slimmed down version meant to run only on
| virtualized machines is 52mb, and their standard or netboot
| versions (which actually include the stuff needed to boot on
| actual hardware) are over 150mb.
| stepupmakeup wrote:
| Even the "virt" Alpine image is unable to successfully
| install without pulling in extra packges from the internet.
| setup-alpine fails at the disk step, depends on syslinux
| and sfdisk.
| nubb wrote:
| tinycore and microcore were real saviors for me back in my dcops
| days. insanely useful back when someone needed a quick linux box
| with serial capabilities. prob less useful now a days with things
| like console kvm being everywhere.
| xuhu wrote:
| Is it 22 MB because it's 2022 ? In 2011, TinyCore iso was 11 MB.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| It's an interesting exercise to try to strip down Ubuntu or
| Fedora. You quickly find out that your WM probably relies on X11,
| which relies on Mesa, which relies on both libgcc and libllvm
| (because you might want to compile OpenGL shaders, duh!)... yeah
| there's two gigs right there.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I remember DSL - Damn Small Linux, which sat at something like
| 5-7MB and was pretty feature complete, including a nice package
| manager.
| passthejoe wrote:
| I think TinyCore is the same developer
| morganvachon wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised that someone on Ladyada's staff would link
| to an article by the highly transphobic and racist Bryan Lunduke.
| As recently as March of this year he was deliberately deadnaming
| and misgendering a prominent ElementaryOS developer.
|
| https://www.osnews.com/story/134655/elementary-os-is-implodi...
| stepupmakeup wrote:
| This is not relevant to the topic at all.
| morganvachon wrote:
| It's not, but people should be aware of where they get their
| news sources.
| soperj wrote:
| If this is his twitter, it looks like he's changed:
|
| https://twitter.com/BryanLunduke
| cgh wrote:
| That looks like a parody account. This is the real one:
| https://twitter.com/TheLunduke
| soperj wrote:
| that's actually really funny.
| morganvachon wrote:
| I've seen that and I believe he felt he had to do so to
| maintain his readership after being called out for his
| bigotry so often of late. I for one don't believe he's
| changed at all, but I don't personally know the guy so I
| can't say for sure he hasn't. Anyway, I'll still refuse to
| read his articles just to be sure I'm not supporting a bigot
| with page views.
| morganvachon wrote:
| As mentioned above that's apparently a parody account that
| fooled me. His real Twitter shows he's still the raging
| bigot he always was.
| fabiospampinato wrote:
| Oh wow, for comparison you can fit about a third of the
| "typescript" NPM package in that much space.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| I like to think of the TinyCore as (const)Linux.
|
| TinyCore boots from a fixed instance state. When booted, this
| state can change as usual, but on reboot it will be reinitialized
| to the defined state.
|
| Persistent changes to the state are done as 'backup' of whatever
| change aspects. The backup is driven by lists -- special text
| files that define files and directories to persist.
|
| TinyCore apps are packed in a custom .tgz format and are
| downloaded from a number of mirrors or locally, if cached.
|
| [0]: TinyCore Concepts http://www.tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| 22 MB is impressive, although I assume usage will be quite
| limited. My favorite small-distro is still puppy linux [0], which
| has a good size/functionality tradeoff.
|
| [0]: https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
| bachmeier wrote:
| An important property of Puppy is that you can access the
| Ubuntu repos. I don't know what you get with Tiny Core.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Tiny Core Linux 13 Released: Needs Just 46MB of RAM, 50MB of
| Disk_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30249581 - Feb 2022
| (26 comments)
|
| _Tiny Core Linux 13.0 released for older or lower-end x86
| hardware_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30183435 - Feb
| 2022 (2 comments)
|
| _Tinycore Linux_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25158736
| - Nov 2020 (81 comments)
|
| _Tiny Core v9.0 Released_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483880 - Feb 2018 (4
| comments)
|
| _Tiny Core Linux_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366807 - Feb 2018 (98
| comments)
|
| _Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10525377 - Nov 2015 (32
| comments)
|
| _Tiny Core Linux_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308606 - Oct 2015 (10
| comments)
|
| _Tiny Core Linux 4.7 overhauls the OnDemand system_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4739459 - Nov 2012 (5
| comments)
|
| _Tiny Core offers a complete Linux solution in 11MB_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1769624 - Oct 2010 (25
| comments)
|
| _Tiny Core: The Little Distro That Could_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=745439 - Aug 2009 (3
| comments)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Now imagine this running on your phone, with a week or more of
| battery life.
| dijit wrote:
| If you're into very small linux desktops- I've had a lot of fun
| with Oasis: https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis
|
| The full desktop image is 77mb
| tambourine_man wrote:
| > Yeah. That's right. You can run your entire operating system...
| from RAM. And, even with only 48 MB... it still runs fast.
|
| I feel old. We had GUI OSs booting from floppy drive and RAM
| Disks with the OS + a few apps in 16MB of RAM some 30-40 years
| ago.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The amiga could run in 256kb. 512k was more common, eventually
| 1MB, and more was a luxury.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Yeah, the original Mac had 128k of RAM total. But is was 1
| bit black and white and only one app at a time.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| He tells you about his Gran Torino and you are mentioning a
| Model T.
| imurray wrote:
| There's a bunch of nostalgia about what small meant to mean, so
| I'll leave some links to the QNX 1.44MB demo floppy:
|
| http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483653
| Keyframe wrote:
| I remember when it was actual. It was impressive then as well!
| sedatk wrote:
| I remember QNX floppy blowing my mind even back in the 90's.
| This was when Linux could load the kernel and the root fs at
| least with two floppies.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And under the hood that did a lot more than most OSs of the
| day. Or of today, for that matter.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Although people usually cite the qnx demo int these threads,
| I'm much more impressed today this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515025
| GavinAnderegg wrote:
| I was just about to post about this as well. I still don't know
| how I ended up with this disk, but got shipped to high school-
| aged me. I was blown away at the time!
| jakearmitage wrote:
| Is it still using X? What WM is that?
| tech234a wrote:
| It uses FLWM [0]. Looks like it also still uses X according to
| that page as well.
|
| [0]: http://tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html
| gaudat wrote:
| Be warned though the image does not boot in pure UEFI systems
| without CSM like recent laptops.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I distinctly remember checking the size of the C:\Windows folder
| on Windows 95 and it being around 50mb.
| javajosh wrote:
| I distrust writeups like this that don't mention other, similar
| work. Alpine Linux diskless mode comes to mind[0].
|
| 0 - https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation#Diskless_Mode
| vladdoster wrote:
| The original article was written due to v13.0 being released.
| javajosh wrote:
| No other distribution is mentioned on any of it's other
| pages, either:
|
| http://tinycorelinux.net/welcome.html
|
| http://tinycorelinux.net/intro.html
|
| http://tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html
|
| http://tinycorelinux.net/faq.html
| stepupmakeup wrote:
| A lot of these pages predate Alpine's existence
| ttgurney wrote:
| Direct link:
|
| http://tinycorelinux.net/
|
| I have wondered how such a tiny distribution is possible. I'm
| thinking of the kernel, in particular--when I try to compile my
| own kernel with no module support and only the drivers I need
| built-in ("make localyesconfig" will do this), it comes out like
| 10MB compressed. And I am no kernel expert, so it's hard for me
| to tell which settings I can change and what will happen if I do.
|
| Then when I boot the most bare-bones system with /bin/sh as init,
| it is using like 70mb of RAM doing nothing.
|
| So anyway, I found that you can just grab their kernel config,
| I'll be curious to see how it differs from more typical configs:
| http://tinycorelinux.net/13.x/x86/release/src/kernel/config-...
|
| Windows 95 ran in 8 MB of RAM. (Well, officially 4 MB for
| marketing purposes, but no one thought that was actually enough.)
| I would be _really_ impressed to see a graphical Linux
| environment that could run in that amount of RAM.
| icedchai wrote:
| Today's "tiny" distributions would be considered yesterday's
| bloatware. One of my first Linux desktops (Slackware Linux) ran
| on a 486 with 8 megs of RAM, including X11. This was a 1.x
| kernel. Running emacs would put it into swap.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| X11 without WM was fine on 2.x as well on 8 MB ram. Loading
| fvwm or whatever I was using ended up with endless swapping.
| icedchai wrote:
| I think I was using TWM or a very early version of FVWM.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > on a 486 with 8 megs of RAM,
|
| > Running emacs would put it into swap.
|
| Heh; a time when "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" was a
| literal comment:)
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| shakna wrote:
| > Windows 95 ran in 8 GB of RAM. (Well, officially 4 GB for
| marketing purposes, but no one thought that was actually
| enough.) I would be really impressed to see a graphical Linux
| environment that could run in that amount of RAM.
|
| Huh? Windows 95, IIRC, will _refuse to even boot_ if you have
| more than 480Mb of RAM, let alone 4Gb.
|
| Most machines of the time had 4Mb of RAM. Something seriously
| powerful had 16Mb.
|
| As for running a modern 32bit Linux on something with minimal
| hardware... The creator of "uARM" [0] says that it's useable,
| and it uses a "30-pin 16MB SIMM" piece of RAM. But honestly,
| the speed of the RAM is more important than the size, for that
| project.
|
| [0]
| https://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%2...
| ttgurney wrote:
| > Most machines of the time had 4Mb of RAM. Something
| seriously powerful had 16Mb.
|
| Yes I did mean to write MB rather than GB; thanks for the
| correction.
|
| On that note, I found this 1995 newspaper article (linked
| from Wikipedia) on the subject. Conclusion was that W95 ran
| on 4MB, but slowly:
|
| https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950924&slug.
| ..
|
| Funny that the writer remarks on having a bunch of Windows
| open and still having "73% resources free". I think I
| remember reading in one of the contemporary books (maybe
| Andrew Schulman's Unauthorized Windows 95) that the dialog
| that shows the % resources free inflates the number
| significantly.
| sedatk wrote:
| > Conclusion was that W95 ran on 4MB, but slowly
|
| Yeah, I clearly remember today that HDD light never going
| off if you ran Win95 with 4MB RAM. One of the reasons I had
| to upgrade my PC.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Long time ago I tried to boot Win3.11 on 4Mb on a PC XT
| that I had built (including soldering components). It
| booted but was horribly slow, so I doubt Win95 was usable
| on 4Mb.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| It was technically usable, but very slow. I ran it on a
| 486 DX2-66 with 4MB of RAM before upgrading to 8MB of
| RAM. That made a drastic difference.
| FlorianRappl wrote:
| I did run windows 95 with 2MB. It was my main reason to get
| 2 more bars with overall 4MBs going up to 6 in total. Boot
| process with 2MB took about 20 to 25 minutes.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > Windows 95 ran in 8 GB of RAM. (Well, officially 4 GB for
| marketing purposes, but no one thought that was actually
| enough.)
|
| I did :-P. Back in the day i tried to run Windows 95 on my AMD
| 386DX 40Hz with 4MB of RAM. Took ages to boot but it did boot.
| I also tried Delphi 2 on that installation, took around 15
| minutes to start.
| btdmaster wrote:
| I tried "make tinyconfig" (https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/) and I
| got bzImage to just under 500 kilobytes. Now, that is only the
| bare minimum and you would still probably want stuff like
| amd64, but it does give a good baseline reference.
| (https://scribe.rip/building-a-tiny-linux-kernel-8c07579ae79d)
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I was surprised they're running a modern kernel like 5.13.x. I
| imagines it'd be 4.19.x or something older.
| indy wrote:
| "Windows 95 ran in 8 GB of RAM"
|
| Did you mean MB rather than GB?
| ttgurney wrote:
| Yes, thanks. Fixed
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| > Windows 95 ran in 8 GB of RAM. (Well, officially 4 GB for
| marketing purposes, but no one thought that was actually
| enough.) I would be really impressed to see a graphical Linux
| environment that could run in that amount of RAM.
|
| Are you sure?
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030814-00/?p=42...
|
| > Windows 95 will fail to boot if you have more than around
| 480MB of memory. (This was considered an insane amount of
| memory back then. Remember, Windows 95's target machine was a
| 4MB 386SX and a powerful machine had 16MB.
| ttgurney wrote:
| Yes, I wrote GB but meant MB. (I suppose because the former
| is more common nowadays.)
| agumonkey wrote:
| Thanks for whoever keeps on working on this. My serotonine levels
| are increasing just by reading.
| [deleted]
| srvmshr wrote:
| Is tiny-core linux open source? I would like to see their package
| selection configuration. Small distributions are a ideal case
| study for grokking the internals.
| shakna wrote:
| > Is tiny-core linux open source?
|
| It's GPL, so... Yes. Their git repositories are currently here.
| [0]
|
| > I would like to see their package selection configuration.
| Small distributions are a ideal case study for grokking the
| internals.
|
| The "TCZ" packaging system works by mounting applications via
| squashfs images, that then act as overlays. [1]
|
| [0] https://github.com/tinycorelinux
|
| [1] http://tinycorelinux.net/arch_copymode.html
| NickRandom wrote:
| Short answer is 'Yes?' although finding the answer was a lot
| more difficult than I thought given the many broken links on
| the TCL site. As usual - Wikipedia provides the following "Tiny
| Core Linux is free and open-source software licensed under the
| GNU General Public License version 2.[4]" although the [4] link
| to the FAQ doesn't provide that detail hence the 'yes?' reply.
| szundi wrote:
| In 1997 I only had 12MB of RAM and was pretty happy
| leeoniya wrote:
| most people were happy with a 640x480 60hz interlaced CRT
| display, too.
| forinti wrote:
| I had 64MB and was very happy. I still have the machine, but it
| now has a whopping 80MB and I'm certainly trying this distro.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Ubuntu can barely run with 2 GB of RAM
|
| That's probably if you're running Gnome. I've found that Ubuntu
| is pretty fast on very old (> 10 years old) equipment if you use
| i3wm or Openbox. AFAICT the only reason old hardware is a problem
| with recent distros is graphics. Lighter desktops don't make the
| same demands. I bought a cheap Dell laptop in 2018 for $300. It
| came with Windows 10, but there's honestly no way to use it. A
| default Ubuntu install is no better. Installed Openbox and it
| flies.
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