how is tinycore able to run a desktop environment on older hardware?

[monn380]

Hello, I'm a relatively new user of Linux.
 I've been under the impression for a couple of months that even though the kernel has very broad support for any type of hardware if you wanted to use a Desktop environment on an older machine you would need to stop updating the kernel and the x server components, that was until i yesterday when I watched a video about installing tiny core on a Pentium 2 laptop and making it work remarkably well with a fully featured window manager and browsing the web without any problems, instead when I've tried to install Linux mint 20 on a 2008 laptop the GUI wouldn't even start.
How does tiny core to have such compatibility to manage to display a DE in a Pentium 2 when a "modern distro" can't even display the login screen properly in a 10 year younger laptop?
any insight on how linux builds the gui and how it works would be appreciated i want to make my laptop work properly again in a normal distro and understand more how linux works

[hiro]

many little things adding up. generally rejecting bloat & newness over older simpler "good'enuf" things, using Xvesa instead of modern Xorg, not using bloated frameworks like gtk/kde etc.

[monn380]

many little things adding up. generally rejecting bloat & newness over older simpler "good'enuf" things, using Xvesa instead of modern Xorg, not using bloated frameworks like gtk/kde etc.

does tiny core usa a special version of the mesa drivers?

[hiro]

no, vesa.

[gadget42]

...
when I've tried to install Linux mint 20 on a 2008 laptop the GUI wouldn't even start.
...

which version of Tiny Core Linux did you try on circa 2008 laptop?

[Rich]

Hi gadget42
Read it again:

... when I've tried to install Linux mint 20 on a 2008 laptop the GUI wouldn't even start. ...

[polikuo]

How does tiny core to have such compatibility to manage to display a DE in a Pentium 2 when a "modern distro" can't even display the login screen properly in a 10 year younger laptop?

The compiler flags, we use -march=i486 -mtune=i686 for 32-bit, other distros have moved on to newer machines.

[neonix]

How does tiny core to have such compatibility to manage to display a DE in a Pentium 2 when a "modern distro" can't even display the login screen properly in a 10 year younger laptop?

TCL has Xvesa and Xfbdev that are compatible with many old and new graphic cards, and don't require complicated configuration.

Xorg is Achilles' heel for Linux and nobody is interested in fixing this heel. Many distros abandom Xvesa and TCL still supports it.

Ofcourse Xorg can be manually configured to works with vesa and fbdev driver just like Xvesa and Xfbdev, but it require knowlage and time.

In TC15 there's vesa-xorg-conf.tcz that allow to run Xorg with vesa driver without any configuration, out of the box in x86-32 and x86-64 system.

[hiro]

misquote, neonix