Does everything you do save to the computer abd stay?@ tlmck:

I loaded TinyCore Linux 2.3.1 on an old notebook today. It found the Ethernet, and grabbed a DHCP address for me. I was immediately able to ping domains. We were off to a good start. Next I clicked on the “Appbrowser” on the menu, when that program fired up, I clicked on “Connect/TCE”, it went out and connected to Iblibo. The menu lists dozens of applications to install, and happily it shows a friendly description, the size it will consume, file names, and dependencies — very nice, thank you. I started out by loading 2 or 3 applications, no problem, they show up on the menu, plus an icon at the bottom of the screen. Pretty cool! I wish the installer provided some ‘entertainment’ as it progresses during the installation, but it does provide a “Finished” popup box.

Then I went for the downs. I chose to install FireFox 3.5.3, which is the current release, as of this date. Some guy named Jason W has shipped 8 updates since April of 2009, through today in October 2009. Every release number is listed, with the date. This built my confidence that the next release of FireFox will be put there too. It’s a 10MB download, I click on it, a few minutes later FireFox is installed over the Internet, the current release — and it works. I think, it can’t be that easy, can it? So I loaded a couple of FireFox plugins, and they work too, as expected. I’ve surfed the web for a few hours, no hitches, no crashes, FireFox works like a million dollars. In fact I’m typing this message into TinyCore Linux and FireFox, right now.

So maybe I’ll figure out all this TCZ/TCE mumbo-jumbo and fight with a local hard drive, which I don’t want. But what I REALLY WANT — RIGHT NOW is to be able to burn my ‘entire’ RAM disk to an ISO CD option. Similar to Puppy Linux’s “Multimedia/Burniso2cd burn iso file to CD/DVD”. It should probably leave out my hardware specific changes, so the CD will work on other PCs. And it should omit my FireFox cache files, and so on.

The TinyCoreLinux.com web site’s “core concepts” page talks about booting up with a “pristine” system. And I agree with those principles. But what could be more pristine than a clean TinyCore Linux install, followed by installing the latest release into a “Distro” of my own.

I teach in the public education system, with essentially zero computer budget. I managed years ago to scrounge up ten Pentium II 300 MHz systems, with a glorious 64 MB of RAM in each, and subsequently to scrounge up enough extra RAM to double that to 128 MB of RAM in each PC.

I have tried at least twenty different Linux distributions on these machines over the years, from Antix to Zenwalk, trying to find one that was easy to install and able to run at usable speed on this slow old hardware. All I needed was a functional Web browser and an interface easy enough for my students to use. Without going into boring details, let me just say that I NEVER found a distribution that met all my preferences; Puppy Linux came closest, but the icon-encrusted desktop confused my students and the intermittent refusal to remember critical system settings on boot-up frustrated me and wasted a lot of my time. Running as root all the time was another major issue.

With Tiny Core Linux I think I may have finally found what I have been looking for all these years. I booted up Tiny Core 2.3.1 from a CD on one of these old PC’s, and was shocked to find myself staring at a configured and working graphical desktop in a few seconds, complete with a working Ethernet connection. No long game of “twenty questions” as with Puppy Linux, no outright failure to configure the ancient hardware as with many other distributions, no five-minute boot time as with Mepis Lite. A few mouse clicks was all it took to get the Firefox 3.5.x TCE downloaded and installed, and there it was, the bare-bones Linux + browser combo capable of running in 128 MB that I had been searching for for so long. Bliss!

Tiny Core 2.3.1 is now installed to the hard disk of that machine, and the Firefox 3.5 TCE saved to a file on the drive. I’ll let my students stress-test it for a few days, and if all goes well, the other nine machines will soon be running Tiny Core as well.

My hat is off to Robert Shingledecker. Robert, THANK YOU for your wonderful little Linux distribution!

-Gnobuddy

I am just a casual user and I have a slow modem, i.e I I have dialup (56kb modem) . will I be able to use tiny core, out of the box ?

I would like to give it a try, as I am looking for a small distro. Slitaz is no good for me , I have been asking for them to add dialup out of the box since it started, but they don’t seem interested. (see nubie1234 at their site).

cheers.

I use a tweaked version of Tiny Core as my primary operating system since three months now and generally I’m very satisfied

Pros
- extremely customizable. I gave it a XP-like look with desktop icons, background picture, fast launch buttons, start menu… Even my wife can use it.
- runs at the speed of light. On my four year old system it boots to the desktop in ten seconds. Firefox (with Flash plugin) starts in less than three seconds and is extremely responsive, most smaller apps like media player, picture viewer etc. start instantaneously.

Cons
- newbies will not get the max out of this distro
- hardware support somewhat erratic – seems more oriented to desktops than to laptops

I spent some time with Tiny Core RC 1 in a Virtualbox. My comments are that the packaging tool is a bit erratic – maybe the download mirror was not performing consistently, maybe it was because I was in a Virtualbox, but I doubt it. Response was good once I did get packages going.

I found Firefox to be broken in RC 1, but Seamonkey works well, so I used it, since I generally prefer it anyway. I used Geany to do a bit of small editing, and fooled around a bit.

Tiny Core is just right for just that – a tiny core of stuff. I would not use it for more than browsing and basic stuff since I can do what it does and more with lots of other distros, but it was just right for simple browsing. I agree with Jim, the packaging arrangement is pretty basic; it would be nice to have some categories or something to break it down at least a little bit. Synaptic and the way it works would be a good model, but hey, what is there is simple, fast, and it gets the job done.

I am inclined to give this a 3 – OK, but not great. On the other hand, as a really tiny, basic core, it hits the mark pretty well, so I may give it a near perfect score on reaching its target objective. That it does quite well, and it is pretty fast, too.

I am getting TC 2.2 RC 1 and will try it out in a Virtualbox. Looks pretty cool to me, so it is about time to try the new RC – which is dated July 8.

So, would you consider this a distro a newbie can use or does one need some Linux expertise?

Hey, thanks Subline Porte! I did not grab the software yesterday, so maybe my delayed timing worked to my benefit; I got to read your feedback. I’ll have to take a look, thanks!