Tiny Core Linux
General TC => General TC Talk => Topic started by: GNUser on October 30, 2019, 04:46:09 PM
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Does anyone know what Robert Shingledecker is up to these days? Is he still with us or has he passed away? If still with us, is he still involved with TCL?
If there are news of him somewhere on forum or TCL website, I couldn't find it.
Who are the main TCL developers today?
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Nobody knows anything?
I'm sorry if the answer to my question is common knowledge, but I'm still fairly new to TCL.
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Robert is still with us though not actively involved with the day to day tinycore.
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Thank you, juanito. Good to know.
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Hello there all,
regards due and whatever endeavours followed .
Thx
Vin
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juanito, please give Robert our regards.
Also, please tell him that TCL is still making huge Shingledecker fans out of users. I have mountains of respect for him--over the years I've used many well-designed operating systems (including Arch Linux and OpenBSD), but Tiny Core Linux surpasses them all.
Even though I use TCL daily (it powers both my personal laptop and wireless router), its beautiful design never ceases to astonish me.
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Great Thanks , Robert Shingledecker!
You've made the job, which all the world appeared to be too busy to do.
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Good to hear that founding father is still with us. Last time he was active in July 20, 2017.
I read a few interviews with Robert but still don't know what is the legend behind the TCL?
TCL is more similar to Not Damn Small Linux. Maybe someone create wiki article about Robert and whole history (with links to other articles and interviews).
TCL embodies what is best in Linux. Fast, small, flexible, free and support for old hardware.
And because its simple construction, it's almost indestructible. I would lost a lot of time for re-installation if I was using typical operation system.
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Freemium....?
Tcl.
Thx
V
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I would like to express my sincere thanks to the creator (Robert Shingledecker) and to all the developers and maintainers of Tiny Core. Especially Tiny Core Plus.
I hope that this distribution will not be abandoned or discontinued, I wish long life, or rather, eternal life for Tiny Core!
Like so many other Linux distributions that have left several users orphaned, and I believe, desperate without their favorite or main Linux Operating System.
If developers can no longer continue to work on Tiny Core Linux, at any time, I ask Juanito to intercede for us, requesting all access to the site, repositories and other platforms so that the community can come together even more to maintain Tiny Core Linux live.
Juanito I hope you are not alone in the project. If so, please let us know.
Could you tell us the contact details and who are the current developers and maintainers of Tiny Core Linux?
Thanks to all.
marcelocripe
Original text in Brazilian Portuguese, translated into English by the Google translator.
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Eu gostaria de registrar os meus sinceros agradecimentos ao criador (Robert Shingledecker) e a todos os desenvolvedores e mantenedores do Tiny Core. Em especial ao Tiny Core Plus.
Eu espero que esta distribuição não seja abandonada ou descontinuada, desejo vida longa, ou melhor, vida eterna ao Tiny Core!
A exemplo de tantas outras distribuições Linux que deixaram diversos usuários órfãos, e acredito eu, desesperados sem o seu Sistema Operacional Linux preferido ou principal.
Caso os desenvolvedores não possam mais continuar o trabalho no Tiny Core Linux, a qualquer tempo, peço ao Juanito, interceder por nós, solicitando todos os acessos ao site, repositórios e demais plataformas para que a comunidade se una ainda mais para manter o Tiny Core Linux vivo.
Juanito eu espero que você não esteja sozinho no projeto. Se estiver, por favor, nos avise.
Poderia nos informar o contato e quem são os atuais desenvolvedores e mantenedores do Tiny Core Linux?
Agradecimentos a todos.
marcelocripe
Texto original no idioma português do Brasil, traduzido para inglês pelo tradutor do Google.
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Could you tell us the contact details and who are the current developers and maintainers of Tiny Core Linux?
See: http://tinycorelinux.net/Team_TC.html
Curaga, JasonW and myself are all active - I'm not sure about bmarkus.
I'm still in touch with roberts.
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Hello
Jasonw works only on dCore correct me if I'm wrong.
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Could you write a Robert's bio. I tried to find information about his career and his books but don't find much. Also want to know about his engagement in Damn Small Linux,
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I would also like to know more about him. There isn't much on the internet other than this interview:
https://distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20090323#feature
If folks find anything else that's informative, please do share.
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I haven't noted anything in the forums from roberts in a while - I hope he's doing ok.
For those interested, I found this article from the previous century...
https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/218 (https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/218)
describing some of Robert's work @ Garden Grove, CA
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His personal site had some info, but I think it's offline now. You might find it in archive.org, and the links to it on the old DSL forums. It was something like shingledecker.net.
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The link http://tinycorelinux.net/Team_TC.html (http://tinycorelinux.net/Team_TC.html) shows "Last Updated, March 3, 2013". If this is still fully correctly then is a great achievement (to keep the same VOLUNTARY team for 11 years). In these days even the employer is changed every few years.
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Hi curaga
I found one of Roberts posts:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/static/act-ST/f-1/t-20203/st-15.html
The link listed there (https://www.shingledecker.org/) leads to
a Prof. Dr. Christopher N. Shingledecker in Kansas.
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It looks like he was co-author of only one book.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040319213947/http://www.shingledecker.org/
Robert Shingledecker (tireless contributor), has been working with Linux since kernel 0.95. He was the first to implement Linux servers in a large scale in the City of Garden Grove back in 1994. He is responsible for bringing Linux to several dot coms. He also created early Linux server appliances including a pre-Knoppix liveCD based on RedHat.
His website is:
www.shingledecker.org
http://web.archive.org/web/20040319213947/http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/contributors.html
Robert Shingledecker’s IT career spans 35 years, beginning with hand-coding machine language programs targeted for Burroughs Corporation minicomputers. Later, he enjoyed using an assembler and then COBOL. Always having a passion for computers, he was an advocate for COMAL, and was an early hacker on MINIX and Coherent OS. In regards to Linux projects, Robert led the first large-scale deployment of Linux in the city of Garden Grove, California, where in 1994 he deployed Samba on DG/UX systems. He also designed a massively scalable Linux/AOLserver/Sybase e-commerce system. Robert then became CTO of several Linux-based dot-com companies. While building Linux-based, no install, live CD-ROM appliances, including firewalls, VPN, web, email, and database appliances, he became interested in Damn Small Linux. Soon, Robert joined John Andrews to help lead Damn Small Linux development. Now retired, Robert spends his time writing code and working on Damn Small Linux. He also enjoys traveling.
https://www.informit.com/authors/bio/96bba5fe-aa6f-4c55-a8a4-a38753c0ee7c
http://damnsmalllinux.org/static/act-ST/f-21/t-20533.1.html://damnsmalllinux.org/static/act-ST/f-21/t-20533.1.html
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Here is extract from book titled "The Official Damn Small Linux Book - The Tiny Adaptable Linux That Runs on Anything"
by Robert Shingldecker, John Andrews, Christopher Negus
Pearson Education Inc. 2008
p.23
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As the project grew, DSL also grew by adding an important developer. When Robert Shingledecker joined the Damn Small Linux development team, he implemented some of the key features of DSL previously mentioned. Robert' s innovations brought about easy procedures for installing DSL to USB flash drive and adding MyDSL extension to a running DSL system.
[...]
Robert, what encouraged you to join DSL development?
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Robert: I have been involved with Linux CD-ROMS since the early 1990s. I created install-type CDs to automate the specialized setup of servers and desktops while I was working at the City of Garden Grove, California. Later, I work for a Linux startup and created live Linux CD server appliances. We created firewalls, mail servers, VPN, LAMP-style systems, several database servers, MySQL, Postgres, and even some prototype commercial ones like Raining Data's D3.
These live CDs were automated to provide whatever services the customer desired. During this development. I had created my own live desktop. Occasionally, I would check Distrowatch.com to see if anyone else was doing the desktop approach. I always felt that there are far more desktops than servers. Demo Linux and later KNOPPIX were far too slow to be practical for everyday use at the time. When I found Jonh's Damn Small Linux, I liked what I saw and began to explore ways to expand its capabilities.
What was the first goal of Damn Small Linux and have they changed?
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Robert: I certainly have not had a roadmap. Things just progressed in an evolutionary way: from adding a flexible backup/restore system to needing a write-enable /opt directory to add more programs. Later, we create self-contained compressed mountable applications, originally called .ci extension, later named UCI. My goal was to honor John's original goal of keeping the distribution at or under 50 MB.
Many would remaste DSL, only to add or change an application. So, my thoughts were focused on how to allow easy flexible additional applications to be added to DSL. These additional applications I called MyDSL extensions. Originally, they were tarballs and UCI. They would either load into RAM disk under /opt or mount under /opt. Some of the user community really wanted to use Debian on live DSL CD. This led to a script to make much of the filesystem write-enabled, which led to the .dsl extension type. This is basically a tarball, but the unique extension type would trigger the script to set up all the symlinks needed.
Recently. I added the capability to use mountable compressed overlay images. These new overlay mounts do not need to be self-contained, yet they have the same advantage in low system resource use as the UCI. I try to keep DSL updated with newer technology, while at the same time, keeping the same the distribution under 50MB and also acknowledging and full supporting the smaller, older, less capable hardware.
We are constantly look for the best of breed, "small is beautiful applications" and utilities-for example, Lua. We heavily use Lua Fltk and create many of our own GUIs. We are not only a small distro; we run well on small resources.
What draws people to DSL?
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Roberts: DSL is small distribution and one that runs very well on very small resources. It is extremely flexible in offering many choices of configuration and expandability. After you read ther chapters that follw, you will begin to realize the potential.
The DSL project welcomes the user community. The MySDL, extensions only represent the framework. The actual extension are required, discused, and created by the community of DSL users. This active community shares in the ownership of this seamless extensions.
What is the most interesting hardware known to running DSL?
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Robert: What comes to my mind is the oryginal ThinkNic Internet Appliance, which is a CD-based machine witch 4MB ramdisk (to save configuration) , a Winmodem, and an Ethernet port. We fully support this "first of breed" Linux appliance.
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Why is DSL good for hobbyiests?
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Robert: The fun of tinkering with old hardware you found in the closed. Now you have a neat small web server, a picture fame, or a car MP3 player. You creativity is set free to explore and share with a community of DSL users. You can create and share MyDSL extensions or learn to code with Bash, Perl, C, Lua, Lua/Fltk. It's all in there.
DSL includes lots of hardware support. So, you can build a web surfing appliance for Grandma. Or perhaps buy or obtain old "throw-away" laptop. We support many of them. Or even buy an embedded device and use DSL , as the embedded OS. We are like Tinkertoys for Linux: a Linux construction kit. It's all about having fun!
What are the challenges to someone who comes to DSL from MS Windows?
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Robert: All the decisions are NOT forced on you. If tinker toys or a construction kit are not fun for you, the basic desktop is still fully funcional when you start out. However, with so many choices and options available for extending DSL, it can be ovewhelming to a new user. But they will soon want to explore.
Even the community of DSL users does not agree on a single installation or runtime enviroment for DSL. We often have "Tastes Great! Less Filling!" types of forum debates.
Also, DSL is Linux, and therfore we respect the UNIX file permissions. Some users are used to running everything as the superuser. We do not. Some expect every new device to be instantly supported, which is not possible given our constraints of size and development. Usually, answers and solutions can be had within the resources of the community.
What future plans do you have for DSL?
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Robert: I would like to see more modularization of DSL. Offer even more choices to the community. Our process is not formal. It is evolutionary based on our own interest and other expressed by this community of DSL users. And it must be fun and interesting for me and John too!
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Could someone write his bio and publish it in https://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/ ???