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Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop

submitted by LorenD+(OP) on 2025-12-06 14:18:42 | 354 points 158 comments
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7. lysace+56[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 15:14:07
>>hypeat+m5
Ideas to decrease risk of MITM:

Download from at least one more location (like some AWS/GCP instance) and checksum.

Download from the Internet Archive and checksum:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/http://www.tinyc...

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9. Y_Y+q6[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 15:16:16
>>hypeat+m5
https://github.com/tinycorelinux
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12. hypeat+s7[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 15:23:26
>>firest+Y5
And compare it against what?

EDIT: nevermind, I see that it has the md5 in a text file here: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/16.x/x86/release/

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24. firest+V9[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 15:40:53
>>hypeat+n8
You can use this site

https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/downloads.html

And all the files are here

https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/16.x/x86/release/

Under a HTTPS connection. I am not at a terminal to check the cert with OpenSSL.

I don’t see any way to check the hash OOB

Also this same thing came up a few years ago

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/reli...

33. ifh-hn+Mc[view] [source] 2025-12-06 16:04:37
>>LorenD+(OP)
I've used many of these small Linux distros. I used to have Tiny Core in a VM for different things.

I also like SliTaz: http://slitaz.org/en, and Slax too: https://www.slax.org/

Oh and puppy Linux, which I could never get into but was good for live CDs: https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/

And there's also Alpine too.

59. haunte+yi[view] [source] 2025-12-06 16:47:55
>>LorenD+(OP)
Another small one is the xwoaf (X Windows On A Floppy) rebuild project 4.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20240901115514/https://pupngo.dk...

Showcase video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8or3ehc5YDo

iso https://web.archive.org/web/20240901115514/https://pupngo.dk...

2.1mb, 2.2.26 kernel

>The forth version of xwoaf-rebuild is containing a lot of applications contained in only two binaries: busybox and mcb_xawplus. You get xcalc, xcalendar, xfilemanager, xminesweep, chimera, xed, xsetroot, xcmd, xinit, menu, jwm, desklaunch, rxvt, xtet42, torsmo, djpeg, xban2, text2pdf, Xvesa, xsnap, xmessage, xvl, xtmix, pupslock, xautolock and minimp3 via mcb_xawplus. And you get ash, basename, bunzip2, busybox, bzcat, cat, chgrp, chmod, chown, chroot, clear, cp, cut, date, dd, df, dirname, dmesg, du, echo, env, extlinux, false, fdisk, fgrep, find, free, getty, grep, gunzip, gzip, halt, head, hostname, id, ifconfig, init, insmod, kill, killall, klogd, ln, loadkmap, logger, login, losetup, ls, lsmod, lzmacat, mesg, mkdir, mke2fs, mkfs.ext2, mkfs.ext3, mknod, mkswap, mount, mv, nslookup, openvt, passwd, ping, poweroff, pr, ps, pwd, readlink, reboot, reset, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, sed, sh, sleep, sort, swapoff, swapon, sync, syslogd, tail, tar, test, top, touch, tr, true, tty, udhcpc, umount, uname, uncompress, unlzma, unzip, uptime, wc, which, whoami, yes, zcat via busybox. On top you get extensive help system, install scripts, mount scripts, configure scripts etc.

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63. Someon+qj[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 16:55:54
>>gardnr+rf
> QNX had a "free as in beer" distro that fit on a floppy, with Xwindows and modem drivers.

I don’t think that had the X Windows system. https://web.archive.org/web/19991128112050/http://www.qnx.co... and https://marc.info/?l=freebsd-chat&m=103030933111004 confirm that. It ran the Photon microGUI Windowing System (https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0SP1.update/com.qnx....)

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72. nopako+wk[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 17:05:24
>>dayeye+Bj
I use one of them to make an old EEE laptop a dedicated Pico-8 machine for my kids. [https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php]
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75. dpflug+dl[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 17:10:42
>>noufal+Fi
https://freedos.org/
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84. Joel_M+4p[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 17:40:45
>>ddalex+li
Licensing, and QNX missed a consumer launch window by around 17 years.

Some businesses stick with markets they know, as non-retail customer revenue is less volatile. If you enter the consumer markets, there are always 30k irrational competitors (likely with 1000X the capital) that will go bankrupt trying to undercut the market.

It is a decision all CEO must make eventually. Best of luck =3

"The Rules for Rulers: How All Leaders Stay in Power"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

85. anthk+vq[view] [source] 2025-12-06 17:53:52
>>LorenD+(OP)
https://luxferre.top http://t3x.org

All of the minilaguages exposed there will run on TC even with 32MB of RAM.

On TC, set IceWM the default WM with no opaque moving/resizing as default and get rid of that horrible dock.

107. suppor+wB[view] [source] 2025-12-06 19:19:54
>>LorenD+(OP)
That’s even smaller than these!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootable_business_card

113. slim+rD[view] [source] 2025-12-06 19:35:58
>>LorenD+(OP)
Tiny Core also runs from ramdisk, uses a packaging systems based on tarballs mounted in a fusefs and can be installed on a dos formatted usb key. It also has a subdistro named dCore[1] which uses debian packages (which it unpacks and mounts in the fusefs) so you get access to the ~70K packages of debian.

It's documentation is a free book : http://www.tinycorelinux.net/book.html

[1] https://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/doku.php?id=dcore:welcome

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115. Beijin+pE[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 19:44:37
>>Someon+qj
Somebody has build it: https://membarrier.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/qnx-7-desktop/
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117. jacque+DE[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 19:46:24
>>ja27+mD
I ran it on a Via single board computer, a tiny board that sipped power and was still more than beefy enough to do real time control of 3 axis stepper motors and maintain a connection to the outside world. I cheated a bit by disabling interrupts during time critical sections and re-enabling the devices afterwards took some figuring out but overall the system was extremely reliable. I used it to cut up to 1/4" steel sheet for the windmill (it would cut up to 1" but then the kerf would be quite ugly), as well as much thinner sheet for the laminations. The latter was quite problematic because it tended to warp up towards the cutter nozzle while cutting and that would short out the arc. In the end we measured the voltage across the arc and then automatically had the nozzle back off in case of warping, which worked quite well, the resulting inaccuracies were very minor.

https://jacquesmattheij.com/dscn3995.jpg

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120. xyzzy3+QH[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 20:13:39
>>pastag+Gf
RISC OS has the concept of "OS units" which don't map directly onto pixels 1:1, and it was possible to fiddle with the ratio on the RiscPC from 1994 onwards, giving reasonably-scaled windows and icons in high-resolution modes such as 1080p.

It's hinted at in this tutorial, but you'd have to go through the Programmer's Reference Manual for the full details: https://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/risc-os/wimp-prog/window-theo...

RISC OS 3.5 (1994) was still 2MB in size, supplied on ROM.

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126. marttt+hM[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 20:57:46
>>dayeye+Bj
I like using old hardware, and Tiny Core was my daily driver for 5+ years on a Thinkpad T42 (died recently) and Dell Mini 9 (still working). I tried other distros on those machines, but eventually always came back to TC. RAM-booting makes the system fast and quiet on that 15+ years old iron, and I loved how easy it was to hand-tailor the OS - e.g. the packages loaded during boot are simply listed in a single flat file (onboot.lst).

I used both the FLTK desktop (including my all-time favorite web browser, Dillo, which was fine for most sites up to about 2018 or so) and the text-only mode. TC repos are not bad at all, but building your own TC/squashfs packages will probably become second nature over time.

I can also confirm that a handful of lenghty, long-form radio programs (a somewhat "landmark" show) for my Tiny Country's public broadcasting are produced -- and, in some cases, even recorded -- on either a Dell Mini 9 or a Thinkpad T42 and Tiny Core Linux, using the (now obsolete?) Non DAW or Reaper via Wine. It was always fun to think about this: here I am, producing/recording audio for Public Broadcasting on a 13+ year old T42 or a 10 year old Dell Mini netbook bought for 20€ and 5€ (!) respectively, whereas other folks accomplish the exact same thing with a 2000€ MacBook Pro.

It's a nice distro for weirdos and fringe "because I can" people, I guess. Well thought out. Not very far from "a Linux that fits inside a single person's head". Full respect to the devs for their quiet consistency - no "revolutionary" updates or paradigm shifts, just keeping the system working, year after year. (FLTK in 2025? Why not? It does have its charm!) This looks to be quite similar to the maintenance philosophy of the BSDs. And, next to TC, even NetBSD feels "bloated" :) -- even though it would obviously be nice to have BSD Handbook level documentation for TC; then again, the scope/goal of the two projects is maybe too different, so no big deal. The Corebook [1] is still a good overview of the system -- no idea how up-to-date it is, though.

All in all, an interesting distro that may "grow on you".

1: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/book.html

138. hiAndr+aW[view] [source] 2025-12-06 22:28:25
>>LorenD+(OP)
Tiny Core Linux has a version for Raspberry Pis called piCore [0] that I wish more people would look at, because it loads itself entirely into RAM and does not touch the SD card at all after that until and unless you explicitly tell it to.

Phenomenal for those low powered servers you just want to leave on and running some tiny batch of cronjobs [1] or something for months or years at a time without worrying too much about wear on the SD card itself rendering the whole installation moot.

This is actually how I have powered the backend data collection and processing for [2], as I wrote about in [3]. The end result is a static site built in Hugo but I was careful to pick parts I could safely leave to wheedle on their own for a long time.

[1]: https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/consider-the-cronslave/

[2]: https://hiandrewquinn.github.io/selkouutiset-archive/

[3]: https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/lessons-learned-from-2-yea...

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139. firest+mW[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 22:29:51
>>maccar+Rt
You can use this site https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/downloads.html

And all the files are here https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/16.x/x86/release/

I posted that above in this thread.

I will add that most places, forums, sites don’t deliver the hash OOB. Unless you mean like GPG but that would have came from same site. For example if you download a Packer plugin from GitHub, files and hash all comes from same site.

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148. oso2k+V11[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 23:17:22
>>jacque+NA
I don't know about CSI cameras. My use case for TCL doesn't require a CSI camera. But it looks like others have made a CSI camera work:

https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,26713.0.html

I recommend asking on that forum. Folks are helpful.

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151. square+L31[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 23:34:33
>>hiAndr+aW
Alpine also has a lesser known RPi build on their download page; by using musl instead of glibc the difference in size and resources used compared to regular distros is huge as well. https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/
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