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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 part

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)

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)