HD install for special purpose.

[roberts]

If you are using the grub from DSL, it is too old.
You can grab the grub floppy from our download site and copy over newer grub files.

[JohnJS]

Thanks roberts,
Happy New Year.

[josephg]

I don't wish to rake it up again. But since this discussion has already started, I just wanted to put my £0.02 in.

I second tobiaus in what he says below. roberts, we all acknowledge the stellar role that you are playing and have played. I have been a long time dsl user, but tcl is closer to my heart in philosophy. I use my own specific apps, including window manager ratpoison and screen and some other minimalist apps. As such, no bloatware is good enough for me. I recently wiped DSL and put Debian etch on my old laptop - 64M memory and 640MHz processer - shameful. But, it is flying faster than my shiny M$ laptop. It has a 2.6 kernel, and I've got opera, flash, mplayer, transmission, audacity, skype, all with the latest libs. i.e. not older expired versions. I just want to say that older hardware need not go to the landfill, just because some people like to keep buying newer hardware every year or so.

I used to carry DSL on my usb stick, and hope that tcl might be a worthy replacement. I never migrated to DSL4, and I have no need for the latest versions of every app, as long as I can do what I need to. I might not be your ideal user, but I know many who think like me...

i get what you're saying. i've said it before and i'll say it again, and without any disrespect to other parties intended, i think the best thing that ever happened to dsl is that you joined the project. and, i think the other best thing that ever happened to dsl is that you left and created tc.

i believe tc is much closer to what i wanted of dsl than even dsl was, but, dsl was my favorite distro at the time you were working on it. naturally, there is part of my thinking that thinks "dsl" whenever i try to guess what you're doing, and i'm not the only person that's going to repeatedly make that mistake.

tc is not dsl, but it is reminiscent enough that someday it might be worth explaining the differences. but since as you said, it's only just begun, we might all figure out more as we see more of tc. because of its size, upgrading by blanking the cdrw and writing the new iso is incredibly quick and easy.

as for older hardware, there is one very obvious and deliberate way that (much) "older hardware" will never be as supported as it was. the 2.6 kernel will never support as much "old hardware" as 2.6 will. in the past i've been against 2.6, but mostly because of an issue that has not presented a problem in tc, or in the larger more "conventional" distros. other than that issue, i like 2.6, a lot.

[Me]

Sorry - I cannot agree that TCL should be liveCD only. There are dozens of reasons to ask Robert to provide a fully functional FULL, or even just FRUGAL, installation script. Apart from the millions of old desktops lurking under beds, there are also hundreds of redundant laptops with only floppy drive input, and/or extremely limited memory, and/or tiny, but adequate, hard discs. All these could be used for single-purpose tasks, perhaps even image-free browsing with Dillo. One thinks of email clients, ping testers, terminals, dumb or otherwise, amongst many others.
In developing this gem, Robert like Klaus before him, may have seriously underestimated the power and range of this infant. If I read correctly, it would be a trivial matter for Robert to develop and issue an installation routine, with caveats if he chooses, but this aspect of coding may be beyond the ability of many potential users.
Come in Robert, we love you.....

[roberts]

But TC is not CDROM only. Most use TC with a frugal grub install.
See the Installation section of the website for how to setup Grub and use with a Frugal install.

http://www.tinycorelinux.com/install.html

As far as a traditional Hard Install goes, I just don't promote it.
In fact I now call that the "Scatter Mode" install as compared to the Tiny & Tidy of Frugal!

Just because, I am not promoting Scatter Mode, does not mean that I am ignoring it.
In the last release v1.2 I fixed a bug that had to do with icons doubling when using Scatter Mode install.

Note grub is not included in the base, it is an extension. So there is no automatic script in the base of TC to peform installations. For existing grub based system it is simply to copy over two files, bzImage and tinycore.gz into your grub boot directory and make a grub menu.lst entry. If you don't have grub then follow the Installation Instructions noted above.

If you wish to do the traditional then its instructions are here in this thread.
Likely they will be placed in the FAQ.

Bugs reports on traditional  (Scatter Mode)  will be addressed and supported whenever possible.

[tobiaus]

I cannot agree that TCL should be liveCD only.

yeah it's never been livecd only, there's always been frugal. let me clear this up since there are things i said in this thread that are old news... i once felt that robert was simply being too critical of users that insist on using a "traditional" (or scatter mode) install.

i never insisted he support them as long as he let the rest of us make the attempt. he's gone way beyond any of my expectations, even helping people with it himself.

he was totally right that frugal is "better" though. for more than 90% of uses. and as a livecd, it's my favorite. i've never done a scatter install with frugal, i prefer using tcz packages over any other system, and a "frugal" install is the closest thing to an os install using tcz.

[Me]

Thanks, guys, appreciate your words of wisdom and guidance. A FAQ would be the icing on the cake for YT.

[tobiaus]

Thanks, guys, appreciate your words of wisdom and guidance. A FAQ would be the icing on the cake for YT.

http://tinycorelinux.com/faq.html ?

[kihoma]

I tested the 1.2 and 1.3 versions and I was very impressed with what I saw. But because I really think that a hard disk "classic" install is the best option for a desktop commom user, I put the Xvesa + Icewm + wbar (here, the influence of tinycore is more than obvious) onto Debian Lenny basic install (no graphical X). Then I installed the xbase-clients, xfonts-base, xserver-common, xfstt, pcmanfm (light file manager), epiphany (light web browser, even lighter than Opera last version) and wlassistant. This way I endded up with a system runnig on less than 30 MB of RAM usage. Actually, I got a 27MB of RAM usage, including an Icewm with a Windows Vista theme and a nice wallpaper. Here you can find a screenshot with some instructions on how to do it (it's in portuguese, sorry). I used the .xserverrc from tinycore. So I think that, instead of using tinycore to something it was not designed to (as the admins said), you could give Debian a try. There must be still some hacks to get memory usage even lower, but I tried nothing but a regular install (except kdrive). I must say that, runnig this with Xorg will take another 10MB of RAM. So, you may end up with a 35-40MB of RAM usage if you decide to go with Xorg instead of Kdrive (Xvesa).
I think this approach (perfect and beatiful  systems runnig on low ram requirements) is more than necessary in a world getting full of e-waste.

[kihoma]

Forgot the link to the portuguese howto + screenshot
http://www.vivaolinux.com.br/dica/Debian-Lenny-com-interface-grafica-e-consumindo-30-MB-de-RAM

[tobiaus]

I think that, instead of using tinycore to something it was not designed to (as the admins said), you could give Debian a try.

it certainly is a nice way to run debian / ubuntu, and i am doing basically the same thing. i'd rather use tc though, the main reason i'm using ubuntu is i haven't got wireless running in tc yet. i use tc on setups where it's reasonable to use wired eth.

[San]

Sorry for bringing this topic up.

I've been trying to install Core on USB Pendrive.
1. Boot Core CD
2. Create partition
3. Move / to new partition (without proc, sys, tmp, mnt...)
4. Manually create partitions
5. Copy grub directory, vmlinuz
6. Prepare menu.lst and install grub

On regular HDD it works well (in virtualbox), but i need to install it on USB Pendrive.
I made it all in VirtualBox, convert hdd image with 'VBoxManage internalcommands  converttoraw NewVirtualDisk1.vdi tc.raw'.
Rawwrite to pendrive 'dd if=tc.raw of=/dev/sdb'.

It boots while adding initrd (core.gz). After removing it - not. I tried to recompile kernel disabling modules (so it is monolithic 12MB kernel), but still can not get it.

Any help, please?

[Lee]

Wow... This thread was almost as long dead as "SCO vs. IBM".   

Much has changed with core since the previous posting in this thread... but not the general feeling about "scatter mode" installations.

There are users here, myself included, who regularly boot from a USB stick with a frugal installation in preference to booting from HD.

Can you tell us what you have in mind for this USB stick?  Is there a constraint that precludes using a regular Core installation?

[theYinYeti]

Hi San! I don’t know what it is that you want to do with your USB flash drive. You might be interested in this article I wrote:
http://yeti.selfip.net/cms/index.php/post/2013/05/08/Bootable-flash-drive-for-both-Linux-and-Windows%3A-part-1

[tinypoodle]

I tried to recompile kernel disabling modules (so it is monolithic 12MB kernel), but still can not get it.

Congratulations, you managed to build a kernel which is 60% larger than the base OS