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Technology/TinyCore Linux, (sdf.org), 05/10/2019
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I have a thin client with a 1GB soldered-on disk, which I
picked up from a thrift store a couple years back for a few
bucks. It's a neat little machine, but it requires an OS
that isn't a hog (as most modern ones are.) Enter TinyCore
linux...
Previously I had installed TinyCore 7. They're at 10 now,
and I wanted to upgrade, but to be honest, the upgrade path
wasn't very clear. My main reason for the upgrade was
improvements in the wireless drivers, I can't speak to any
other gains.
Today I finally just wiped the disk and re-installed TC10
from scratch. It was fairly smooth, but there were a few
gotchas:
1. TinyCore 10 (I used the CorePlus version) has some sort
of timeout loading packages at boot. My external DVD
drive was too slow, and it dumped me at a prompt with
nothing useful loaded, and no indication that there
was a problem, except that nothing worked. The solution
was to add a waitusb=10 line to the options at boot
time. Problem 100% solved.
2. Video didn't work with the mode I installed with. It
failed gracefully and asked me for another mode, which
I input. I then had to update the option in
/mnt/sda1/tce/boot/... something. It's in there, a cfg
file. I don't know if there's a utility to updated it,
I just did it in vi.
Other than that, everything worked like a charm. Wifi is a
lot more stable (so far, I've only tested a little, but it
was dying every few minutes before.) Packages were as easy
to install as before. All in all, it's a rockin' OS if
you've got a very small amount of space available. I'd love
to hear of other/better options, if anyone has them!
