grub4dos basics

[justposted]

Let me start by saying hello and, of course, thank you for developing TCL. I have been given an ancient laptop (64Mb RAM) and couldn't believe it when TCL was up and running on it in under 30 seconds. Even more impressed with the pretty bouncing launcher and nice clear menus.

So then I read the starter pack forum post and really liked the sound of this:

"Do you want to install Tiny Core into a single directory on your existing NTFS Windows file system? Then grab the single files grub4dos.gz and use the GUI installer, tc-grub4dos."

So far so excited. But I am really struggling with how to complete this seemingly simple task.

I found grub4dos.gz on the TCL website. Bunged it on the CD alongside the TCL installation. Grabbed it with Load Starter Pack. Even managed to locate the tinycore.gz file (thanks to a forum post here telling me that was what I was supposed to do) .... and stopped.

Could somebody give me a quick bit of info on the difference between between Frugal and Embedded? Couldn't find that on the website, forum or via Google. The ability to store TCL applications on an existing Windows drive sounds perfect for my needs, but it isn't clear to me whether the grub4dos installer will mess around with my MBR or whether it just points TCL at a folder on the Windows partition after booting from CD.

I'm happy to boot from CD (for now at least) and don't want to stuff up my existing Windows ME installation. It might be old and rubbish, but at least it works on this old laptop!

Thanks in advance. Bit of a long post I'm afraid, but I'm hoping that it helps to know what is or isn't obvious to people first coming to TCL.

[justposted]

To partly answer my own long-winded post, what I'm talking about appears to be persistence and is explained here: http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:persistence_for_dummies

Still interested in frugal vs embedded.

Also think that explaining the persistence thing more clearly up-front ('you can use the live CD, but save files in a folder on your hard drive') would be helpful. It's probably in big letters on the TCL homepage or something, but I certainly missed it for a good 2 hours this evening!

[roberts]

frugal is the typical installation method for Tiny Core. That is it is not a traditional hard drive installation, which I call "scatter mode", because all the files of the system are scattered all about the disk.

With frugal, you basically have the system in two files, e.g., bzImage and tinycore.gz whose location is specified by the boot loader. Additionally, a writable /tce directory for extension downloads and subsequent loading whether upon boot or ondemand.

With grub4dos starter pack, typically used in a Windows environment, frugal wouid mean that bzImage, tinycore.gz and tce directory are in a separate partition.  You can use Windows to shrink the Windows partition to make room for Tiny Core.

grub4dos, also offers embedded. This would allow bzImage, tinycore.gz, and tce directory to reside within the Windows file system. No separate partition needed!

grub4dos does overwrite the MBR with a grub4dos menu to allow booting both Windows and Tiny Core whether frugal or embedded.

[Rich]

You can use Windows to shrink the Windows partition to make room for Tiny Core.

Just a minor clarification. Windows XP and prior versions require a third party tool to adjust partition
size. Windows Vista and Windows 7 can do this directly.