Because of the backup, it seems possible to any beginner that adding 20 extensions and removing the 3 after some use and configuration may not the same as adding the 17 from scratch.
Adding 20 extensions and removing the 3 after some use and configuration is the same as adding the 17 from scratch. Extensions are not modified when you use Tiny Core. This is one of the big advantages of Tiny Core. The only thing which may be changed is your settings and personal files.
Alright, here's an example then. You install Xorg-7.5-3d, create a good xorg.conf for it, put its path in /opt/.filetool.lst plus whatever else you have configured for X, observe a bug that seems to be the fault of Xorg, remove Xorg-7.5-3d, install Xorg-7.5-vmware, reboot.
Then Xorg-7.5-vmware boots up with a xorg.conf, and may fail if the error is in there. This is not the same as installing Xorg-7.5-vmware from scratch without ever messing with Xorg-7.5-3d.
There may be more configuration files you have listed in /opt/.filetool.lst that are brought back to life and may be what causes the malfunction.
Nobody has suggested that the existing system does not work well.
I have observed firefox crash while playing an HD flash video (not TC's fault) and come back to life after a reboot with the home page and addons reset. But in other distros if firefox crashes, the configuration survives. Isn't the firefox configuration in the home directory, and doesn't /opt/.filetool.lst include the home directory by default? If yes, there's a bug somewhere causing the the profile to be reset.
If not, how can the user know what other directories the latest version of firefox or whatever uses for its configuration? Or
the extension creator is supposed to reliably reverse-engineer each version of firefox or whatever to find out where ALL its configuration is stored, and list his reverse-engineering results in the extension's .txt?
This is inviting troubles, like reverse-engineered ntfs-3g it will take ages to get 100% reliable.
Firefox has changed the location and format of the bookmarks and other config several times from version to version, I know because I was struggling to keep track with it under sandboxie, which has some analogies with TC. So its a never-ending chase.
Don't get me wrong, I like TC too much, I'd rather put up with occasional bugs if this is what it takes for outstanding performance. The winning feature for me in TC is speed and low memory, not download size or hard disk space.