15 ms·

Tiny Core Linux 13.0 is a full Linux desktop in 22 MB

351 points by tsujp 4y ago

ttgurney 4y ago
Direct link: http://tinycorelinux.net/ 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-5.15.10-tinycore 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.
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  > 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.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  "Windows 95 ran in 8 GB of RAM" Did you mean MB rather than GB?
  - ttgurney 4y ago
    Yes, thanks. Fixed
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > 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=42903 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 4y ago
    Yes, I wrote GB but meant MB. (I suppose because the former is more common nowadays.)
- shakna 4y ago
  > 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%20on%208bit https://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%2...
  - ttgurney 4y ago
    > 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=2143253 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.
    - JPLeRouzic 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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.
      - 4y ago
- icedchai 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      I think I was using TWM or a very early version of FVWM.
  - mrtweetyhack 4y ago
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > 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:)
    - icedchai 4y ago
      It sure was! I upgraded to 32 megs about a 6 months later, and it was amazing. I had never dreamed of so much memory.
- btdmaster 4y ago
  I tried "make tinyconfig" (https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/ 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 https://scribe.rip/building-a-tiny-linux-kernel-8c07579ae79d)
rowanG077 4y ago
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 4y ago
> 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.
- em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
  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/ http://www.tinycorelinux.net/13.x/x86_64/tcz/
- ziddoap 4y ago
  >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 4y ago
    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/ 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.
nubb 4y ago
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.
szundi 4y ago
In 1997 I only had 12MB of RAM and was pretty happy
- leeoniya 4y ago
  most people were happy with a 640x480 60hz interlaced CRT display, too.
- forinti 4y ago
  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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fabiospampinato 4y ago
Oh wow, for comparison you can fit about a third of the "typescript" NPM package in that much space.
jakearmitage 4y ago
Is it still using X? What WM is that?
- tech234a 4y ago
  It uses FLWM [0]. Looks like it also still uses X according to that page as well. [0]: http://tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html http://tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html
imurray 4y ago
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 http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483653
- jacquesm 4y ago
  And under the hood that did a lot more than most OSs of the day. Or of today, for that matter.
- marcodiego 4y ago
  Although people usually cite the qnx demo int these threads, I'm much more impressed today this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515025
- Keyframe 4y ago
  I remember when it was actual. It was impressive then as well!
- GavinAnderegg 4y ago
  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!
- sedatk 4y ago
  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.
- cubano 4y ago
  QNX was/is simply amazing! Talk about an OS that should have utterly destroyed DOS and all other CLI-based OSs. I first encountered it at an oil-terminal company I worked at in the 80's and couldn't believe the features packed into such a small footprint. It's real-time event handling was top-notch, and it was stable as all-hell...in a sane world it would have dominated the market.
javajosh 4y ago
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 https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation#Diskless_Mode
- vladdoster 4y ago
  The original article was written due to v13.0 being released.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    No other distribution is mentioned on any of it's other pages, either: http://tinycorelinux.net/welcome.html http://tinycorelinux.net/welcome.html http://tinycorelinux.net/intro.html http://tinycorelinux.net/intro.html http://tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html http://tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html http://tinycorelinux.net/faq.html http://tinycorelinux.net/faq.html
    - stepupmakeup 4y ago
      A lot of these pages predate Alpine's existence
agumonkey 4y ago
Thanks for whoever keeps on working on this. My serotonine levels are increasing just by reading.
srvmshr 4y ago
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 4y ago
  > 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 https://github.com/tinycorelinux [1] http://tinycorelinux.net/arch_copymode.html http://tinycorelinux.net/arch_copymode.html
- NickRandom 4y ago
  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.
yellowapple 4y ago
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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jeppesen-io 4y ago
  you know, that's a really clever idea
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    Right? It sure saved my ass more than once.
- marcodiego 4y ago
  Please details! How can I put an image in /boot and load and run it from GRUB?
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    I'm away from my PCs at the moment, but if you already have a Linux distro installed then you should be able to edit grub.cfg, copy the existing entry for your distro, and punch in TCL's vmlinuz+initrd. Once I'm back home I'll put up a fuller write-up.
    - jaclaz 4y ago
      >you should be able to edit grub.cfg You mean the grub configuration file that shouldn't be edited? # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by /usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # It is a pet peeve of mine, but according to the good people that wrote GRUB2, grub.cfg is subject to auto-magic modifications when updating the (main) Linux install, so it shouldn't be edited manually but rather sort of scripted. For a GRUB2 installed to harddisk, modifications should be written to 40_Custom https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/CustomMenus https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/CustomMenus otherwise (it depends on which Linux distro is the "main" one) it can happen that at next update the grub.cfg is recreated losing your changes to it.
zoomablemind 4y ago
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 http://www.tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html
littlecranky67 4y ago
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/ https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
- bachmeier 4y ago
  An important property of Puppy is that you can access the Ubuntu repos. I don't know what you get with Tiny Core.
- niutech 4y ago
  There is also SliTaz Linux, whose ISO is only 43 MB (https://www.slitaz.org/en/get/#rolling https://www.slitaz.org/en/get/#rolling).
tambourine_man 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  The amiga could run in 256kb. 512k was more common, eventually 1MB, and more was a luxury.
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      He tells you about his Gran Torino and you are mentioning a Model T.
gaudat 4y ago
Be warned though the image does not boot in pure UEFI systems without CSM like recent laptops.
- khoobid_shoma 4y ago
  Yeah, that's unfortunate it does not support UEFI out of the box.
ricardobeat 4y ago
I remember DSL - Damn Small Linux, which sat at something like 5-7MB and was pretty feature complete, including a nice package manager.
- passthejoe 4y ago
  I think TinyCore is the same developer
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    One of the developers, yeah. Bit of a complicated and messy history: https://distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20090323&mode=68#feature https://distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20090323&mod... In short: John Andrews created DSL. Robert Shingledecker started contributing patches and got brought in as a developer; he created (among other things) the MyDSL extension system and a bunch of other goodies. DSL started falling apart organizationally, and Andrews "exiled" Shingledecker (in the latter's words) - so Shingledecker carried on with developing Tiny Core Linux instead.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  DSL was near-exactly 50MB (since that's the size of a "business card" CD-R). And yeah, somehow that thing managed to ship with multiple web browsers and a full office suite. DSL was my first distro (really second, but it was the first I actually installed on a machine - specifically, the Compaq Presario 1210 my mom handed down to me), and I remember it fondly.
dijit 4y ago
If you're into very small linux desktops- I've had a lot of fun with Oasis: https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis The full desktop image is 77mb
xuhu 4y ago
Is it 22 MB because it's 2022 ? In 2011, TinyCore iso was 11 MB.
bachmeier 4y ago
> 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.
- undersuit 4y ago
  I've got Lubuntu 22.04 on my first gen 2GB Intel Compute Stick, it came with Windows 8 installed. Definitely getting a little long in the tooth but I can use it for streaming no problem if I have a reliable WiFi connection. I've been trying to get even lighter environments configured in an image maybe even a lighter distro but... it's definitely getting a little long in the tooth and I only understand so much of the work Ian W Morrison has done for these devices: https://www.linuxium.com.au/ https://www.linuxium.com.au/
- Asraelite 4y ago
  I'd really love an explanation of what these modern desktop environments are actually doing in hardware that requires so many resources. I'm not at all experienced with them but to me it seems like it's just rendering 2D boxes and couldn't possibly doing anything difficult.
  - Boltgolt 4y ago
    Well for one, GNOME is now running javascript code for many parts of the UI
phendrenad2 4y ago
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.
jacquesm 4y ago
Now imagine this running on your phone, with a week or more of battery life.
morganvachon 4y ago
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-imploding/ https://www.osnews.com/story/134655/elementary-os-is-implodi...
- stepupmakeup 4y ago
  This is not relevant to the topic at all.
  - morganvachon 4y ago
    It's not, but people should be aware of where they get their news sources.
- soperj 4y ago
  If this is his twitter, it looks like he's changed: https://twitter.com/BryanLunduke https://twitter.com/BryanLunduke
  - morganvachon 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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.
  - cgh 4y ago
dang 4y ago
Related: Tiny Core Linux 13 Released: Needs Just 46MB of RAM, 50MB of Disk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30249581 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30183435 - Feb 2022 (2 comments) Tinycore Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25158736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25158736 - Nov 2020 (81 comments) Tiny Core v9.0 Released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483880 - Feb 2018 (4 comments) Tiny Core Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366807 - Feb 2018 (98 comments) Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10525377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10525377 - Nov 2015 (32 comments) Tiny Core Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308606 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 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=745439 - Aug 2009 (3 comments)
peter303 4y ago
Our PDP 11/34 UNIX ran on 256 KB core and 6MB disk. With room to run apps.
lambdaba 4y ago
I distinctly remember checking the size of the C:\Windows folder on Windows 95 and it being around 50mb.
dekhn 4y ago
It's huge! My first Linux distribution fit on four floppies and included emacs GCC and x11. A.out was a terrible binary format though
MarkusWandel 4y ago
22MB for the OS. 22GB once you have a few browser tabs open. I remember when a normal Linux install clocked in at a few hundred megabytes, and running 1080ish fullscreen video was pushing the envelope. Browsers were lightweights then. Now any old junker can play movies but modern web bloat... oh so painful.
t3rra 4y ago
[dead]

351 points by tsujp 4y ago

Direct link: http://tinycorelinux.net/ 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-5.15.10-tinycore 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.

badsectoracula 4y ago
> 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.
sys_64738 4y ago
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 4y ago
"Windows 95 ran in 8 GB of RAM" Did you mean MB rather than GB?
- ttgurney 4y ago
  Yes, thanks. Fixed
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> 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=42903 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 4y ago
  Yes, I wrote GB but meant MB. (I suppose because the former is more common nowadays.)
shakna 4y ago
> 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%20on%208bit https://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%2...
- ttgurney 4y ago
  > 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=2143253 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.
  - JPLeRouzic 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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.
    - 4y ago
icedchai 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    I think I was using TWM or a very early version of FVWM.
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > 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:)
  - icedchai 4y ago
    It sure was! I upgraded to 32 megs about a 6 months later, and it was amazing. I had never dreamed of so much memory.
btdmaster 4y ago
I tried "make tinyconfig" (https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/ 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 https://scribe.rip/building-a-tiny-linux-kernel-8c07579ae79d)

rowanG077 4y ago

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 4y ago

> 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.

em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
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/ http://www.tinycorelinux.net/13.x/x86_64/tcz/
ziddoap 4y ago
>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 4y ago
  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/ 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.

nubb 4y ago

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.

szundi 4y ago

In 1997 I only had 12MB of RAM and was pretty happy

leeoniya 4y ago
most people were happy with a 640x480 60hz interlaced CRT display, too.
forinti 4y ago
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.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fabiospampinato 4y ago

Oh wow, for comparison you can fit about a third of the "typescript" NPM package in that much space.

jakearmitage 4y ago

Is it still using X? What WM is that?

tech234a 4y ago
It uses FLWM [0]. Looks like it also still uses X according to that page as well. [0]: http://tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html http://tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html

imurray 4y ago

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 http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483653

jacquesm 4y ago
And under the hood that did a lot more than most OSs of the day. Or of today, for that matter.
marcodiego 4y ago
Although people usually cite the qnx demo int these threads, I'm much more impressed today this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515025
Keyframe 4y ago
I remember when it was actual. It was impressive then as well!
GavinAnderegg 4y ago
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!
sedatk 4y ago
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.
cubano 4y ago
QNX was/is simply amazing! Talk about an OS that should have utterly destroyed DOS and all other CLI-based OSs. I first encountered it at an oil-terminal company I worked at in the 80's and couldn't believe the features packed into such a small footprint. It's real-time event handling was top-notch, and it was stable as all-hell...in a sane world it would have dominated the market.

javajosh 4y ago

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 https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation#Diskless_Mode

vladdoster 4y ago
The original article was written due to v13.0 being released.
- javajosh 4y ago
  No other distribution is mentioned on any of it's other pages, either: http://tinycorelinux.net/welcome.html http://tinycorelinux.net/welcome.html http://tinycorelinux.net/intro.html http://tinycorelinux.net/intro.html http://tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html http://tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html http://tinycorelinux.net/faq.html http://tinycorelinux.net/faq.html
  - stepupmakeup 4y ago
    A lot of these pages predate Alpine's existence

agumonkey 4y ago

Thanks for whoever keeps on working on this. My serotonine levels are increasing just by reading.

srvmshr 4y ago

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 4y ago
> 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 https://github.com/tinycorelinux [1] http://tinycorelinux.net/arch_copymode.html http://tinycorelinux.net/arch_copymode.html
NickRandom 4y ago
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.

yellowapple 4y ago

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.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jeppesen-io 4y ago
you know, that's a really clever idea
- yellowapple 4y ago
  Right? It sure saved my ass more than once.
marcodiego 4y ago
Please details! How can I put an image in /boot and load and run it from GRUB?
- yellowapple 4y ago
  I'm away from my PCs at the moment, but if you already have a Linux distro installed then you should be able to edit grub.cfg, copy the existing entry for your distro, and punch in TCL's vmlinuz+initrd. Once I'm back home I'll put up a fuller write-up.
  - jaclaz 4y ago
    >you should be able to edit grub.cfg You mean the grub configuration file that shouldn't be edited? # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by /usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # It is a pet peeve of mine, but according to the good people that wrote GRUB2, grub.cfg is subject to auto-magic modifications when updating the (main) Linux install, so it shouldn't be edited manually but rather sort of scripted. For a GRUB2 installed to harddisk, modifications should be written to 40_Custom https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/CustomMenus https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/CustomMenus otherwise (it depends on which Linux distro is the "main" one) it can happen that at next update the grub.cfg is recreated losing your changes to it.

zoomablemind 4y ago

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 http://www.tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html

littlecranky67 4y ago

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/ https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/

bachmeier 4y ago
An important property of Puppy is that you can access the Ubuntu repos. I don't know what you get with Tiny Core.
niutech 4y ago
There is also SliTaz Linux, whose ISO is only 43 MB (https://www.slitaz.org/en/get/#rolling https://www.slitaz.org/en/get/#rolling).

tambourine_man 4y ago

> 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 4y ago
The amiga could run in 256kb. 512k was more common, eventually 1MB, and more was a luxury.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    He tells you about his Gran Torino and you are mentioning a Model T.

gaudat 4y ago

Be warned though the image does not boot in pure UEFI systems without CSM like recent laptops.

khoobid_shoma 4y ago
Yeah, that's unfortunate it does not support UEFI out of the box.

ricardobeat 4y ago

I remember DSL - Damn Small Linux, which sat at something like 5-7MB and was pretty feature complete, including a nice package manager.

passthejoe 4y ago
I think TinyCore is the same developer
- yellowapple 4y ago
  One of the developers, yeah. Bit of a complicated and messy history: https://distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20090323&mode=68#feature https://distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20090323&mod... In short: John Andrews created DSL. Robert Shingledecker started contributing patches and got brought in as a developer; he created (among other things) the MyDSL extension system and a bunch of other goodies. DSL started falling apart organizationally, and Andrews "exiled" Shingledecker (in the latter's words) - so Shingledecker carried on with developing Tiny Core Linux instead.
yellowapple 4y ago
DSL was near-exactly 50MB (since that's the size of a "business card" CD-R). And yeah, somehow that thing managed to ship with multiple web browsers and a full office suite. DSL was my first distro (really second, but it was the first I actually installed on a machine - specifically, the Compaq Presario 1210 my mom handed down to me), and I remember it fondly.

dijit 4y ago

If you're into very small linux desktops- I've had a lot of fun with Oasis: https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis The full desktop image is 77mb

xuhu 4y ago

Is it 22 MB because it's 2022 ? In 2011, TinyCore iso was 11 MB.

bachmeier 4y ago

> 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.

undersuit 4y ago
I've got Lubuntu 22.04 on my first gen 2GB Intel Compute Stick, it came with Windows 8 installed. Definitely getting a little long in the tooth but I can use it for streaming no problem if I have a reliable WiFi connection. I've been trying to get even lighter environments configured in an image maybe even a lighter distro but... it's definitely getting a little long in the tooth and I only understand so much of the work Ian W Morrison has done for these devices: https://www.linuxium.com.au/ https://www.linuxium.com.au/
Asraelite 4y ago
I'd really love an explanation of what these modern desktop environments are actually doing in hardware that requires so many resources. I'm not at all experienced with them but to me it seems like it's just rendering 2D boxes and couldn't possibly doing anything difficult.
- Boltgolt 4y ago
  Well for one, GNOME is now running javascript code for many parts of the UI

phendrenad2 4y ago

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.

jacquesm 4y ago

Now imagine this running on your phone, with a week or more of battery life.

morganvachon 4y ago

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-imploding/ https://www.osnews.com/story/134655/elementary-os-is-implodi...

stepupmakeup 4y ago
This is not relevant to the topic at all.
- morganvachon 4y ago
  It's not, but people should be aware of where they get their news sources.
soperj 4y ago
If this is his twitter, it looks like he's changed: https://twitter.com/BryanLunduke https://twitter.com/BryanLunduke
- morganvachon 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
- cgh 4y ago

dang 4y ago

Related: Tiny Core Linux 13 Released: Needs Just 46MB of RAM, 50MB of Disk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30249581 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30183435 - Feb 2022 (2 comments) Tinycore Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25158736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25158736 - Nov 2020 (81 comments) Tiny Core v9.0 Released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483880 - Feb 2018 (4 comments) Tiny Core Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366807 - Feb 2018 (98 comments) Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10525377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10525377 - Nov 2015 (32 comments) Tiny Core Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308606 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 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=745439 - Aug 2009 (3 comments)

peter303 4y ago

Our PDP 11/34 UNIX ran on 256 KB core and 6MB disk. With room to run apps.

lambdaba 4y ago

I distinctly remember checking the size of the C:\Windows folder on Windows 95 and it being around 50mb.

dekhn 4y ago

It's huge! My first Linux distribution fit on four floppies and included emacs GCC and x11. A.out was a terrible binary format though

MarkusWandel 4y ago

22MB for the OS. 22GB once you have a few browser tabs open. I remember when a normal Linux install clocked in at a few hundred megabytes, and running 1080ish fullscreen video was pushing the envelope. Browsers were lightweights then. Now any old junker can play movies but modern web bloat... oh so painful.

t3rra 4y ago

[dead]