BG-Tiny Linux Bootdisk runs in 4MB RAM

[nick65go]

In searching for pearls/nuggets of OS/linux to run in severly restricted environment, I (re)-discovered BG-Tiny Linux.
Is for historic interest, what talented people could achieved.
As happens with all good things, grab it until the site does not disappear 
BG-Tiny Linux Bootdisk, Version: 2.0  (2011/01/01), from https://www.giannone.ch/bgtlb/current/
Runs from floppy, needs a 386 machine (SX, fpu not neccessary) with 4 mb ram.

LINUX-Kernel  2.4.37.11 (UPX-ed 3.05) , filesystems: vfat, ext2, ext3, iso9660, cramfs, proc, ramfs, tmpfs, loop.
based on uClibc  0.9.27 (statically linked into programs) and busybox BusyBox  1.3.2
VGA Text console + BUS / Ports: PCI + ISA Bus, Parallel Port, Keyboard (USB)
Block Devices: IDE/ATAPI Disk/CD-Rom, Floppy Disk, Loopback
ISAPNP (Plug and Play) + PLIP - Parallel Link cable

Programs: gpart 0.1h, (dosfstools 3.0.11 + ms-sys 2.2.0), (lilo 22.8 + oneit_lite 1.0)
- e2fsprogs, fdisk, gzip, tar and unzip are integrated in BusyBox

- [, [[, ash, busybox, cat, chattr, chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, cut, date, dd, df, dmesg,
du, e2fsck, e2label, echo, egrep, env, false, fdisk, fgrep, find, findfs, fsck, fsck.ext2,
fsck.ext3, grep, gunzip, gzip, head, ifconfig, kill, ln, loadkmap, losetup, ls, lsattr,
md5sum, mkdir, mke2fs, mkfs.ext2, mkfs.ext3, mknod, mkswap, more, mount, mv, nc, ps, pwd,
reset, rm, rmdir, sed, sh, sleep, sort, swapoff, swapon, sync, tail, tar, test, touch,
true, tty, tune2fs, umount, uniq, unzip, vi, wc, yes, zcat

For writing the floppy image type: dd if=bg-tlb-2.0.img of=/dev/fd0

There is free ram of 1168kb and the total amount of free ram (free low ram + buffers + cached) is now 1556kb on a machine with 4MB of total ram. Amazing!

[nick65go]

Hi, I am open to suggestions, links to articles / sources will be nice if you have some. Or else maybe AI will help me ...
I am searching for "best in class" linux" OS which can run (not just booting) with MAXIM 4 / 8 / 16 / 32 / 64 /128 MB RAM.

For 4 MB I found one.
For 16-32 MB maybe DSL (Damn Small Linux). 
For over 128 / 256 MB RAM, Tiny-core or Alpine are very good. (live / small-containers)
I will like to have at least one or two for each range. Thanks in advance.

Maybe the admins of this forum could propose a voting system, with a combination of CPU + RAM your TC users currently use as a pair of ranges? For example: 486 CPU machines were manufactured/used with average (8 - 32) RAM,  (or 686 CPU with 64 MB RAM, I guess)??

[patrikg]

My first floppy one was the great LRP, that was running lots of my devices then.
https://web.archive.org/web/20040320120132/http://www.linuxrouter.org/

[CNK]

The one I've used most is BasicLinux. Only 3MB RAM required and extra software available to install.

A modern floppy distro is Floppinux, but it needs a whole 20MB RAM.

There have been many others.