PDP11 Posted March 18, 2019 Share Posted March 18, 2019 As much as I love Armbian, I'm also interested in the Tinycore project - not as competition, but as a slightly different discipline with a different outlook. Rather than merely reproduce what can be found at the project site, I'll run over a few quick concepts. Maybe you'll find it interesting as well. In a nutshell - what makes it tiny is that it is basically a kernel, which then relies upon Busybox for the shell/file/unix utilities, including init. You add on as much or little as you like, although there is the total basic commandline / shell offering, or lightweight Xvesa gui desktop to get started. If you want a full blown X11 setup, you can do that too. But it is more than that - relying on a ram-based filesystem, which can include on-demand, and changes to your userland are done with persistent storage. That means no bit-rot. Totally goof up your configurations? Just don't save your changes on exit / logout. There are 3 similar versions - Tinycore 32/64 bit - custom made by devs/users, Dcore relying on Debian/Ubuntu, and Picore for RPI's. Other limited board support is there but not super active. But still basically kernel, busybox utils and init, and you take that as far as you want to go. http://www.tinycorelinux.net/ Most quickie "install and boot" reviews online show systems that haven't actually adjusted their system or screen resolution. Just because it's called Tinycore, doesn't mean your screen (or config.txt file or whatever) has to be microscopic. Again - it is not meant to "compete" with Armbian, but just a different way of looking at things - which is always good for inspiration on both sides. Hint for those digging out an RPI from the closet - don't forget to resize your partition after install. Most importantly, it has the same sort of small dev vibe to it like Armbian, which is the *real* reason to run anything... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lanefu Posted March 18, 2019 Share Posted March 18, 2019 Whoa. It looks like it might be small enough to reside in SPI flash. Is that true or tried? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMac32 Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 I ran tinycore on some PC's a long time ago for experimentation purposes. I check back from time to time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PDP11 Posted March 19, 2019 Author Share Posted March 19, 2019 SPI flash? I'm not dev so can't say directly, but I've booted from spinning rust to most other forms of any flash that was bootable. Heh, the out-of-box install looks spartan, but one takes it as far as they want. Like Armbian, I'm fascinated by whats under the hood. btw, a special shout out to Tkaiser et al concerning the sd cards. Before I had my Potato, I got schooled by you guys on the cards, controllers, official sd card formatter and the like. Saved me from flailing around on quite a few non-Armbian projects when I was just a lurker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted March 19, 2019 Share Posted March 19, 2019 Armbian started as a build engine for compiling u-boot, kernel and making all together into a Debian image for Cubietruck. In essence this is still today, but script expanded to complex SDK with support for many boards and become a reference Linux (development) for SBC/TV boxes. Userspace (the easy part) is vanilla Debian (with slight changes/optimisations) and represent everything what sits on top of the kernel/u-boot. Idea to make another "side" product of this build engine is present - a minimal Linux, u-boot + kernel + just some minimal Linux userspace: Tiny, Alpine, completely custom ... but until someone will not just start doing, we are stalled Roughly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PDP11 Posted March 19, 2019 Author Share Posted March 19, 2019 Heh, what was that saying? "The craft so long, the lyfe so short..." I'm still blown away at the amount of boards you guys support, officially and unofficially. I'd go totally insane. I really enjoyed your recent BalcCon and Tuxcon video presentations! Thanks for doing those, it's inspiring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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