Yes, you read the title right – an eleven megabyte Linux distribution.

Speed and ultra-minimalism are what TC is all about. Here are some quick specs:

Tiny Core runs the Linux 2.6 kernel with Busybox. It uses Tiny X for the GUI, along with the JWM window manager. It provides a basic environment with GUI and a web-browser. The whole OS loads itself into RAM and runs from there.

Installation

Download it here, burn it onto a mini-CD and boot it.

(all screenshots courtesy the TinyCore website)

Press enter to boot. F2 and F3 will bring up a list of options you can pass to TC on boot.

The desktop then loads:

You don’t actually need to install it to a hard disc, but you can if you want. If you choose not to install it, extensions you install or files you save won’t be there the next time you boot. Very good installation instructions can be found on the Installation Page on the TC website.

There are different ways to set it up (documented in detail here):

• TCE on PPR – Install apps on a hard disk (Persistent Personal Repository) and load them into RAM on boot up.
• TCZ on PPR – Install apps on a hard disk, and just mount them on startup (straight from the hard disk) instead of loading them into RAM.
• PPI – Persistent Personal Installation – where everything is installed onto a Linux partition or a loopback file, and only the core is loaded into the RAM on bootup.

Additionally, you can have a persistent home directory, or even an encrypted home directory. Again, the best explanation is here.

Installing applications (extensions)

Tiny Core has something like a package manager for installing applications, called “appbrowser” and is present in the dock:

You can connect to either the TCE or the TCZ repository (TCZ apps being mounted straight from PPR, saving you some RAM). Once it connects, you can choose to install from a variety of applications:

Note: you’ll need to be connected to wired internet for all this. TC doesn’t come with wireless modules pre-installed nor does it come with support for fancy network hardware.

Using Tiny Core

There’s not much to this at all. Click anywhere on the background to bring up JWM’s main menu. The rest is easy.

After that, it’s all your imagination. Run it on your old pre-Pentium laptop with 16 megs of RAM and watch it fly

Oh, and the FAQ is very useful. Where is it best used? Netbooks of course!

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