Tiny Core Linux 15 stuffs modern computing in a nutshell

Tiny Core Linux shows that a fully functional, GUI-driven Linux distro can be smaller than Windows 95 and still be modern and useful. Version 15 is out, in both x86-32 and x86-64 editions. It's based on kernel 6.6.8, glibc 2.38, and includes GCC version 13.2. It comes in three variants: Core is text-only, although you can …

[Al fazed]

investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

Thank you for this Monday news item. A positive story about a good Operating System and so the future appears great once more.

As a geriatric computer user I now have something to look forward to, a foray into my cache of almost antique x86 machines. I am also pondering if I can successfully dual boot this MacBook Pro with TCL. Not that there's much wrong with it other than it's become rather slow compared to how it used to run.

Thank you for brightening up the weeks ahead.

ALF

[John Robson]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

Whilst I applaud keeping machines out of ewaste...

At some point there comes a time when the efficiency gains of the last twenty years outweigh the waste.

Very dependant on whether the machine is likely to be on 24/7, or just there to run ${hobby} for a few hours a week.

[Mike 125]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

>the efficiency gains of the last twenty years

In software? Sorry- remind me- where are those?

[John Robson]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

">the efficiency gains of the last twenty years

In software? Sorry- remind me- where are those?"

Nowhere... the efficiency gains are in the hardware side.

The amount of compute that's now available in something like a raspi, for significantly lower power draw than old hardware isn't to be sneezed at.

Hence the expected "usage time" being a significant factor. For a 24/7 use case there is no point in running an old server that chugs down 300W to do what could be accomplished by a Pi3 sipping a mere handful (including an SSD of course).

[Roland6]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

> what could be accomplished by a Pi3 sipping a mere handful (including an SSD of course).

And what could be accomplished on the same hardware running a less thirsty OS…

[David 132]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

What was that old saying?

“Intel giveth, and Bill Gates taketh away”

[ldo]

Re: the efficiency gains of the last twenty years

How about:

* The JIT concept that turned JavaScript from a slow and marginal embellishment in web pages into something fast enough for serious interactive use

* HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 protocols for faster and more secure Web access

* The emergence of the RISC-V processor architecture

* Wayland as a replacement for the legacy overheads of X11

* Vulkan as the next-generation interactive graphics API and the successor to OpenGL

Just a few that came to mind.

[mdava]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

I don't know why this is being downvoted - there come a point where all things are past their useful lives.

I have a netbook from around 2008. I *could* install even a normal linux os (say xubuntu or lubuntu) and it would run fine, but in 2024 day-to-day use means a browser and 2Gb RAM is going to make that slow and painful.

Or I could buy a laptop from a few years ago with 16Gb RAM and a hugely faster processor for under £200.

If you have a specific use case for an old, low-powered machine then have at it.

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

> a point where all things are past their useful lives

That depends on the answer to "useful to whom?" If the answer is "no-one" then yes, the e-waste skip beckons, but if not, well, make the thing useful to the person who can use it. That's non-trivial in itself, because you have to get $THING into the hands of $NOT_USER_YET.

[Bebu]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

《a specific use case for an old, low-powered machine 》

A laptop with a serial port would be favourite.

A small distro and minicom... you are in business. Still a lot of stuff out there with rs232 ports. (25 pin at that :)

My last x86 notebook with a serial port died ages ago only the mac powerbook with a serial port still functional (also with built in modem.)

[GBE]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

A small distro and minicom...

Nonsense! C-Kermit is the only real option!

I'd rater use Putty than Minicom...

[Dan 55]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

Browsers have become as bloated as a complicated OS in their own right. You probably have a mobile phone or another computer with a browser so if you are willing to forget about running a browser on a low-powered PC, or perhaps just Lynx for LAN use, then the whole machine becomes more useful once again.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

"Or I could buy a laptop from a few years ago with 16Gb RAM and a hugely faster processor for under £200."

Hate to tell you but that is an old slow machine these days

[Yankee Doodle Doofus]

Re: Hate to tell you but that is an old slow machine these days

Have you looked at used/refurbished machines lately? You might be surprised what you can find in the mentioned price range.

[Roland6]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

> there come a point where all things are past their useful lives.

Whilst, I get the issue over “ancient” systems, however, there are still a large number of low performance systems being sold on the high st. Something that enables these to be useful extends their useful lives.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

"efficiency gains" - I suppose you're referring to use of electricity in which case you need to compare the full lifecycle and manufacturing cost not just the operational usage.

[wolfetone]

It can definitely bring life to an old laptop. But from my own testing the small footprint doesn't remain small for long depending what you want to do.

My own testing involved setting up a server to run and execute PHP scripts which would read/write data to a remote database. The small footprint of the OS didn't remain that way, not so much the fault of the OS but it's the associated packages the software you want to run requires. It's incredible that you can have a working OS run at idle at such low requirements but it just highlights how heavy and bloated software has become.

It's been 6 months since I tried it for my own use case, and I think what let it down was a piece of automation I wanted to happen that I could get working on a standard Linux device but not so on TCL. It's not put me off using it, but you do have to consider what you'll be using on it and whether the software itself can work within the confines of the resources provided.

[Neil Barnes]

There is a certain charm in using a system which contains all that you need it to - and nothing more, though. This was (is?) the premis of Gentoo.

And yes, I know I can go through and remove all the unneeded modules, but it's a bit too much like hard work. I'm tempted to try this and see what happens... though there will be automatic bloat, I feel, as soon as I install the first program that requires Java, for example.

[Blackjack]

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

To give you an idea the recently revived Damn Small Linux takes more Ram doing nothing but running the Desktop that the Plus version of Tiny Core does!

Heck in theory Tiny Core should work on a machine with only 256 of Ram but you would be limited on what you can run.

Be aware however that these type of Linux distros are usually no good for being online all day due to updates not being as frequent as other more used Linux distros. Even if you somehow put a modern Web browser that has frequent updates using Flatpak or something like that, that does nothing for the rest of the distro.

Still really useful to revive old machines or machines with pitiful hardware. Any of those "Only 4 GB of Ram" Windows 10/11 deals fly using Tiny Core, just close the window, you don't look respectable chasing after a flying computer!

[Steve Graham]

it works

In minutes, I've just downloaded the Coreplus ISO, dd'd it onto a USB stick and booted it on an old 32-bit netbook. Screen, touchpad, keyboard and wifi all worked straight away. It even found the swap partition on the hard drive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there an equally tiny browser?

I have an old 32 bit machine I occasionally play with to try to keep liming along, so I'd be interested in trying this - but it's all well and good having a tiny OS if the browser one runs on it is a resource hogging monster. On my current lightweight setup I have Pale Moon, which is not great TBH. Does the CorePlus version come with a browser, and/or does anyone have any recommendations for a super light browser to complement this ?

[robinsonb5]

Re: Is there an equally tiny browser?

The best long-term hope for a lightweight but featureful browser is probably going to be Ladybird [1] - it's early days yet but the project does seem to have serious momentum.

In the meantime there's "links", I guess...

[1] https://ladybird.dev/

[Blackjack]

Re: Is there an equally tiny browser?

Unfortunately nowadays Web Browsers need regular updates to keep your safer while browsing online. That means you tend to be limited to forks of Chromium and Firefox. Seamonkey is unfortunately a mess and noob unfriendly even it it still has a 32 bit version and does get updates once in a while and it uses less ram that Firefox or Chrome/Chromium.

Basilisk got new owners so you may want to give it a try and look at the source code to see if it fits your needs and it is safe enough. Strangely the source code url still says palemoon despite the change in ownership...

[Someone Else]

"Swiss Army Chainsaw"

Love. It.

[ldo]

Re: "Swiss Army Chainsaw"

That was the description of Perl. I think Larry Wall coined it.

[keithpeter]

The Manual

They put a lot of work into that manual. Nice to see.

See icon.

[Luiz Abdala]

Run from a ROM Chip

Remember the days when DOS came in a ROM chip? Yeah, this thing could come on a chip on the motherboard.

Hell, instead of those BIOS interfaces we all know and hate, we could boot into this, gpart a nvme partition with NTFS, install Windows 11 or whatever you want and go from there. Imagine an OS that can't be infected because it is read-only by force. If you want to update it, chuck the chip off and insert an updated one. It could include a recorder so you can update it yourself.

Just a thought.

[DJohnson]

Re: Run from a ROM Chip

Along the same line, I'm still looking for a USB-connected mass storage device based off of an EPROM. "Are you insane?" Maybe but hear me out.

I want a portable near-universal bootable device which is _inconvenient_ to change or erase, and which would require breaking a tamper-evident seal to do so. Something I could travel with and know that even if it's out of my sight for short periods, the intact seal is a good sign that it's contents have not changed. If border security wants to read it, go ahead. Make copies for all I care. But when I get to my destination I can use it to boot a system to a software environment I trust, and from there I can import other (more mundane) storage.

The closest I've found are a line of flash drives from Kanguru (https://www.kanguru.com/) that have a physical write-protect switch. The one I bought for my initial playing around isn't going to win any speed awards but that's fine. I figure I could file off the tip of the switch plastic and use a clear heat-shrink sleeve as the tamper-evident seal over it.

The prominence of EEPROM and the explosive mis-use of the term 'ROM' in the last 20 years has not made my searches very productive... but I suspect there wasn't any great interest in UV-erasable storage with 2-4GB per chip.

[JamesTGrant]

Re: Run from a ROM Chip

Encrypt HDD - upload to remote secure storage storage, wipe HDD, take HDD out of laptop, carry separately. RAM too if you’re able and willing) Reassemble at destination. More seriously, either take a box fresh device and leave the laptop at home and SSH tunnel into it from said ‘box fresh’ device once you’ve re-re-re-wiped it. (Or use an iPad… he said with a wink)

Curious to know - where are you travelling to/from/through that inspires your caution?

I’ve used an immutable HDD boot image before and it’s a right ol’pain!!

[DJohnson]

Re: Run from a ROM Chip

Yeah "reload after arrival" is what led me to conclude that a known-good starting point would be needed. From there sure you can install a normal read-write OS and decrypt a set of SSH keys, etc.

Oh nothing special, just a privacy-loving American contemplating travel to Europe and the Middle East in the future. I figure the odds of someone _actually_ taking an interest in me or my gear is low, but if I can come up with a rough plan that doesn't cost much (in money or time) then it's worth a little extra precaution.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Run from a ROM Chip

~Beware~ of local regimes/regulations/laws which make your use of encryption illegal. This would include encrypted media, SSH tunnels, etc. You probably could carry a micro-SDMC card comfortably in your mouth through the airport, but once you put everything together and are out on the streets or in your hotel room with it, if you are detained, you will have additional legal (or other) issues to deal with.

I'd load up my netbook with Windows 10 and an assortment of cat pics/videos before travelling out to a non-first-world country, just something for the border police to see if they take your laptop, boot it up, and/or vacuum its drives. A black text screen, "Enter Hard Drive Passphrase:", and a blinking underline cursor upon bootup will earn you some extra-special attention.

[werdsmith]

Re: Run from a ROM Chip

UV-erasable storage with 2-4GB per chip

Remember 2-4MB eproms. 2716 and 2732.

My little bottle of acetone for cleaning the sticky labels off the windows and my Stag programmer that could do 8 at a time from a master.

[Pete 2]

Less code, fewer bugs?

We can hope!

[Gene Cash]

Re: Less code, fewer bugs?

Or at least a hell of a lot smaller attack surface.

[STOP_FORTH]

Some mistake, surely?

Shouldn't Tiny Core use a microkernel?

[ldo]

Re: Shouldn't Tiny Core use a microkernel?

You mean, like Minix?

[STOP_FORTH]

Wrong link

Yes.

It was a joke.

URL article does not mention Minix?

[trevorde]

You can never be too thin

Anyone remember the QNX Photon microGUI that was part of the QNX demo floppy? It managed to cram a full TCP/IP stack *and* a web browser onto a 1.44MB floppy disk.

http://qnx.puslapiai.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm

[IvyKing]

Re: You can never be too thin

The last version of HP-UX for the 68040 would run in 8MB, though it would probably be swapping like crazy. This included the GUI and some applications, though I think 16MB would make it considerably less painful.

While I've had a fair amount of experience running QNX v4 and v6, I don't recall trying out the demo floppy. QNX was generally easy to use and it was a bit of a hoot that Vedit was the standard editor for version 4 - having previously using it in the mid 1980's on an SCP 8086 machine.

[ecofeco]

Interesting

Very interesting!

[Anonymous Coward]

It booted in a few seconds, and left us at a desktop – there's no login screen

And my question is "Why the hell can't I do this in Linux (or Windows) normally?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't I boot straight to desktop in linux?

Err, because you haven't set the option? My Mint install is set to do this, but I did it so long ago I've forgotten where the setting is. Only takes a few seconds to boot too, on an SSD.

[Pigeon Post]

TC in use

There don't seem to be many actual _users_ here, so here's my experience...

Wanting to host a few network applications back in 2021 (lockdowns, eurgh), I obtained a cheap thin client from eBay, and researched the small Linux distros. Very impressed with TC, although it took a while to get my head round how it manages everything - so different from mainstream distros. But the web info is tremendous - hat-tip here to https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Linux/ who shares a fantastic amount of useful info to help with both hardware and OSs.

So for the past 3 years, this kit has run 24/7 (minus hols) hosting a DNS proxy server that sinks dodgy web addresses, and vTuner to re-enable my Denon internet radio:

- HP T520: 1.2GHz 2-core, 4GB RAM, 16GB Flash storage (6 Watts, less than my router)

- tinycoreplus 12.0

- dnsmasq 2.55

- Python 3.6 with small custom scripts (~37MB)

- tinyX (~28MB, for initial setup)

...which together use - wait for it - 180KB ram and 2.9GB free disk. No swap space needed with such small memory requirements.

But I'd agree with the commentards above - TC is for niche use. If you want to use "conventional" mainstream applications like web browsing, watch videos, do CAD, write snazzy documents, etc, use a fatter box (T620?) and a "conventional" distro. Wonder how it goes on a 13th gen PC?