InstantCore

[Rich]

Hi jazzbiker

... It is so comfortable and convenient to: ...

That's an easy statement to make when you have years of
experience and hindsight to rely on.

About 15 years ago when I was looking for an alternative to
Windows, I had neither of those to rely on.

... 1. dd it to some drive and instantly dive at the full depth. ...

I didn't know about dd. As a newb, that was probably a good thing.

... 2. Run it in qemu, perform some tweaking and return to the point 1. ...

Even if I knew about qemu, my hardware probably was not
up to the task of running it.

... 3. Mount in rw mode and adjust manually. ...

Mount? That would have been a foreign concept for someone coming
from the Windows world.

Back then, I started out with zero Linux experience. I wasn't looking to
install anything. I didn't want anything writing to my hard drive.
Those live ISO's were a useful stepping stone for this know-nothing
newbie. They allowed me (with my limited knowledge) to test various
distros to see which ones were best suited for my hardware prior to
committing to installing one.

[patrikg]

Rich you mension DD

Here is a site that i have get lots of tips from regarding DD..

https://www.noah.org/mediawiki-1.34.2/index.php?title=Dd_-_Destroyer_of_Disks

[jazzbiker]

Hi CNK!

Well I still write them to CDs. You could include all the functionality of your disk image in a dd-able ISO anyway, catering for the likes of me as well. Dual BIOS/UEFI booting is possible with dd-written ISOs, though it took me quite a while to figure out how to set that up right.

CDs are rather expensive toys nowadays :-) What is CD/USBflash exchange rate in Your country?
In fact almost every ISO found itself written to some kind of flash drive.

But everyone has their own opinions. I believe Puppy Linux switched from ISOs to disk images a while ago, so your opinion isn't unique. That might have turned me off, except I already hadn't tried a new Puppy Linux version in many years anyway.

Well, I'm glad not to be alone, and in the good company :-) Join us with BarryK!

[jazzbiker]

Hi Rich!

Hi jazzbiker

... It is so comfortable and convenient to: ...

That's an easy statement to make when you have years of
experience and hindsight to rely on.

I think installation with the single dd is comfortable and convenient for absolute noobs too.

About 15 years ago when I was looking for an alternative to
Windows, I had neither of those to rely on.

Oh, yeah, 15 years ago I was buying laptops with Win installed too... But Knoppix looked like a portal into another world! I was young and handsome, now Linux swarm is holding us tight ;-)

... 1. dd it to some drive and instantly dive at the full depth. ...

I didn't know about dd. As a newb, that was probably a good thing.

Everything must be just in its time: first kiss, first s_e_x, first dd ...

... 2. Run it in qemu, perform some tweaking and return to the point 1. ...

Even if I knew about qemu, my hardware probably was not
up to the task of running it.

The same as above but

Code: [Select]

sed -e 's/dd/qemu/'

... 3. Mount in rw mode and adjust manually. ...

Mount? That would have been a foreign concept for someone coming
from the Windows world.

Code: [Select]

sed -e 's/qemu/mount/'

Back then, I started out with zero Linux experience. I wasn't looking to
install anything. I didn't want anything writing to my hard drive.
Those live ISO's were a useful stepping stone for this know-nothing
newbie. They allowed me (with my limited knowledge) to test various
distros to see which ones were best suited for my hardware prior to
committing to installing one.

Of course ISOs are great, but alive filesystem and even device images are - better? more flexible? attractive as for new experience? But bigger, still does it really matters nowadays?

[core-user]

Optical media is pretty much dead as far as installable live media is concerned  - pendrives have been king since USB2 arrived.

(If frightened of using 'dd', you can also use 'cat' or 'cp' to put nearly every image onto a pendrive.)

[jazzbiker]

Hi core-user!

Optical media is pretty much dead as far as installable live media is concerned  - pendrives have been king since USB2 arrived.

I don't want optical media to be dead, sometimes they are well suited and in place due to their read-only nature.

In my understanding the game changer for USB drives was mostly appearance of "Boot from USB" option in BIOSes.

[jazzbiker]

(If frightened of using 'dd', you can also use 'cat' or 'cp' to put nearly every image onto a pendrive.)

High-end, low-end, back-end, front-end, ..... frightened :-0

[jazzbiker]

Tested installation of InstantCore to the local drive.

Box: EEE PC 901
Two local SSDs: 4G and 8G.

InstantCore written to 8G USB flash drive. Not inflated.
Boot from it into "base+resize"

Local drives are /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. Flash is /dev/sdc/

Install:

Code: [Select]

sudo dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=600

That's all, folks!

[Leee]

Probably directory per version:

Code: [Select]

/boot
/lost+found
/tc10/home
/tc10/opt
/tc10/tce
/tc11/home
/tc11/opt
/tc11/tce
...
?

I use a directory per version but place them under /boot and some other directories off of the root directory of the device for mostly-static data (so in the example below everything implicitly starts with /mnt/sda1 or similar)

Code: [Select]

/boot
    core14.0
        tce
        tce64
    core13.1
        tce
        tce64...
/lost+found
/music
/photos
/ebooks
/videos
I also have /opt/bootsync.sh set up to symlink the current tce directory as /tce and a few other similar (symilar?) symlinks for convenience.

[CNK]

Well I still write them to CDs. You could include all the functionality of your disk image in a dd-able ISO anyway, catering for the likes of me as well. Dual BIOS/UEFI booting is possible with dd-written ISOs, though it took me quite a while to figure out how to set that up right.

CDs are rather expensive toys nowadays :-) What is CD/USBflash exchange rate in Your country?

When I bought a bulk pack years ago, about $0.15 per disc. Since then I've picked up packs at second-hand stores and garage sales for $0 - $2 (yes, some are giving them away). Unfortunately most distros don't fit on a CD anymore, and DVDs are painfully slow. Then again one DVD's worth of data is all my monthly internet data allowance, so I rarely go to the trouble of downloading those at a free Wi-Fi location anyway.

USB drives are about a minimum of $6 if you wait all year for the best specials. On a regular day $10 - $15 at the cheaper stores. If one wants to keep a few distros/rescue-discs, CDs still look way cheaper than eg. 10x USB drives. But I do also keep all the ISOs on a USB HDD to avoid needing to waste internet data re-downloading them if a disc gets wrecked, so with one of these multi-boot systems I could probably use that for booting computers itself. I can't be bothered with that though.

The USB HDD cost me around $80 in around 2013, so I could have bought 533 CD-Rs instead. CDs probably are more expensive now, but not that much.

In fact almost every ISO found itself written to some kind of flash drive.

Perhaps. My point is that you can either cater for the possibly exceptional people like me or not. It's harder to make ISOs, but you don't have to sacrifice features for USB-drive users in order to do so. Like publishing a custom distro image for others in the first place, it just depends on whether you want to make the effort (I think a total of one other person used the TC-based ISO that I made, after I did a full day's compatibility testing with CDs and USBs ).

[jazzbiker]

Hi CNK!

Of course talking about media we should take into consideration the capacity. So the price per GB matters. I think it is correct approach, if we use these toys to store some data :-)

In our country now best quality CDs cost around $0.30, the cheap  ones $0.15. For $5 You can by 32GB flash drive. So for flash memory we got 5/32=0.15625 $/GB. For CDs we got 0.15/0.7=0.2143 in the cheapest case. Interesting that DVDs price is almost equal to CDs. Are they really so slow that someone may choose CD over DVD?
External HDD cost less than 50$ for 1TB and we got 50/1000=0.05 $/GB. Conclusions are obvious. Encountering that HDD is hundred times handier and smaller :-)

[CNK]

Of course talking about media we should take into consideration the capacity. So the price per GB matters.

Not for me, because as I said I don't want to mess around with multi-boot things like Ventoy, so for 10x CD ISOs the choice is either 10x CDs or 10x USB drives for me. I like the simplicity of picking out a CD and have it boot straight up, compared to messing about with extra boot steps. I'm not trying to convert you to CDs, but just pointing out why I personally wouldn't use a disk image release instead of an ISO.

Interesting that DVDs price is almost equal to CDs. Are they really so slow that someone may choose CD over DVD?

I do. Booting a big Linux distro from DVD takes ages compared with CD, and burning takes even more ages.

[jazzbiker]

Hi CNK!

I'm not trying to convert you to CDs, but just pointing out why I personally wouldn't use a disk image release instead of an ISO.

InstantCore is proposed for new users, not for an experienced ones. One-touch all-in-one full-functional dual-boot BIOS/UEFI USB flash drive and then if necessary one-touch install to the local drive.

[CNK]

InstantCore is proposed for new users, not for an experienced ones.

All that I said applied to me the first time I tried Tiny Core. I also mentioned that Puppy Linux adopting disk images instead of ISOs would dissuade me from trying that again.

But my point is only that ISOs still serve a purpose for some potential new users who are like me, which is what you originally asked about. Whether you accomodate those people or not is up to you.

[jazzbiker]

But my point is only that ISOs still serve a purpose for some potential new users who are like me, which is what you originally asked about. Whether you accomodate those people or not is up to you.

How am I to accommodate? Offical ISOs can be downloaded form http://tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html, aren't they?