Tiny Core Factory

[ScriptTiger]

Greetings! I am "officially" a new member to the forums, although I have been a long-term reader. This post is related to TC and not off-topic, so I hope this is the right place to put this.

As I said, I have been using these forums as a resource right alongside the official manual, which I have read cover to cover several times by this point. I'm more of an enthusiast than any kind of "developer," and I'd also like to take this moment to thank all of the developers for this amazing project. It's simplicity serves as an awesome educational tool for Linux, while also lending itself to customization from the ground up with unlimited potential to become any kind of operating system one might want, be it general purpose, single-purpose, or what have you.

The customization potential being what it is, I have always been eager to see how other Tiny Core enthusiasts have been using the system. Being a long-time GitHub junkie, I really wished there was a GitHub org of some kind where system builds and configs could be shared and collaborated on within the GitHub environment. Obviously the git protocol is designed for text files, not binaries, so what I came up with was the best way to share such things is by sharing build/packaging scripts that can be run within TC to create an operating system of a certain type, be it someone's ideal office OS, or someone else's perfect cryptominer dream machine or whatever.

I've read the forum guidelines and this is, of course, NOT a commercial endeavor. I don't intend to profit from any of this, be it donations, ads, or whatever. It's all hosted from GitHub, so the potential for such things would be limited from the start anyway. It's strictly a Tiny Core enthusiast portal of sorts that I'd like to get feedback on.

Here are the project links:

https://tinycorefactory.github.io/
https://github.com/TinyCoreFactory

Please check them out and give me your honest opinions, it would be very much appreciated. Right now I only have one build/package script as more or less a demo/template of what I'm talking about, called BetterBox (TC packages for bettercap). As I said, we can't share actual binary configurations, but I think the scripts can both serve as functional OS builders as well as be additional sources of knowledge for people wanting to explore TC further and walk people through command by command how to achieve certain results, etc.

[NewUser]

Why not just post your scripts and ideas here?

[Juanito]

Have you seen this:

https://github.com/tinycorelinux

[ScriptTiger]

Thanks for the replies!

Why not just post your scripts and ideas here?

I don't want them to be just "your scripts" or just "my scripts." I would like for them to be collaborative efforts. For instance, I am by no means a dev and have already posted one script there, but Juanito could probably roll out of bed half asleep and submit one PR to make it 1,000 times better, safer, more efficient. Whichever scripts you find interesting and have suggestions on, you can actively collaborate on there. If I post my scripts here, they will forever just be mine and people can run across them in the forums and discuss them, but they're not really a living document like git can provide. As I said in my original post, I have been a long-time reader of these forums and have indeed found many scripts here, but I'm sure many people have also found the same scripts and made their own changes to them but we'll never know what they were and how awesome those changes might be. The only way to do that here would be discussing it and replying with suggestions and so forth, and if the OP is active on the forums they can edit their original post to reflect those changes, but it doesn't include the same change management and it's still not as openly collaborative.

Have you seen this:

https://github.com/tinycorelinux

I've been a follower of that account from the start, but my impression was those were official project scripts. I am not necessarily trying to contribute to the Tiny Core project itself, although if scripts emerge that you think would be a good fit that would be awesome. If someone makes a script to build out a general desktop for work with a window manager, OfficeLibre and whatever else, I personally would be interested in that script to see what their ideas are and see how well it might work out for me at work, but I don't think it should be included in the main project files.

Another facet of Tiny Core Factory would also be the website (tinycorefactory.github.io) and not just the collaboration in git, as well. So if someone generates their version of Kali Linux but built on Tiny Core and the script is super long and technical and takes hours to build, I can just build it myself once and make it available on the website in the form of an extension, initrd, or ISO. Others may make scripts just to help people configure their OpenSSH properly and a restore file, mydata.tgz, could be available for download on the website instead of a script just to make things easier for some people. It's just about options for different people, whatever might lower the technical barriers to entry.

I'm sure we have all seen the same simple questions repeated many times and many times someone will just tell them the answer is in the book or in some other documents and that they should read that first. But the truth of the matter is some people just can't follow along even if it is in the book, everyone learns differently. Indeed, many of the posts I've read here I've even wondered if the OP was even a native English speaker, which would obviously further complicate reading comprehension. I would like Tiny Core Factory geared not just towards the technically inclined making awesome scripts, but also to Linux beginners that need to see the product or end result of that script in action to really understand what's going on.