←back to thread

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

(www.tinycorelinux.net)
518 points LorenDB | 7 comments | 06 Dec 25 14:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.236s | source | bottom
Show context
trollbridge ◴[06 Dec 25 15:15 UTC] No.46173936[source]▶
Not to disrespect this, but it used to be entirely normal to have a GUI environment on a machine with 2MB of RAM and a 40MB disk.

Or 128K of ram and 400 kb disk for that matter.

replies(10): >>46173975 #>>46174032 #>>46174138 #>>46174272 #>>46174291 #>>46174522 #>>46174810 #>>46174831 #>>46179105 #>>46179554 #
1. forinti ◴[06 Dec 25 15:55 UTC] No.46174272[source]▶
The Acorn Archimedes had the whole OS on a 512KB ROM.

That said, OSs came with a lot less stuff then.

replies(3): >>46174428 #>>46175056 #>>46191404 #
2. psychoslave ◴[06 Dec 25 16:13 UTC] No.46174428[source]▶
If that is a lot less of things not needed for the specific use case, that is still a big plus.
replies(1): >>46174519 #
3. pastage ◴[06 Dec 25 16:25 UTC] No.46174519[source]▶
It was GUI defined manually by pixel coordinates, having more flexible guis that could autoscale and other snazy things made things really "slow" back then..

Sure we could go back... Maybe we should. But there are lots of stuff we take for granted to day that were not available back then.

replies(2): >>46175092 #>>46176265 #
4. xyzzy3000 ◴[06 Dec 25 17:35 UTC] No.46175056[source]▶
That's only RISC OS 2 though. RISC OS 3 was 2MB, and even 3.7 didn't have everything in ROM as Acorn had introduced the !Boot directory for softloading a large amount of 'stuff' at boot time.
5. masfuerte ◴[06 Dec 25 17:39 UTC] No.46175092{3}[source]▶
The OS did ship with bezier vector font support. AFAIK it was the first GUI to do so.

P.S. I should probably mention that there wasn't room in the ROM for the vector fonts; these needed to be loaded from some other medium.

6. xyzzy3000 ◴[06 Dec 25 20:13 UTC] No.46176265{3}[source]▶
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.

7. lproven ◴[08 Dec 25 12:18 UTC] No.46191404[source]▶
> The Acorn Archimedes had the whole OS on a 512KB ROM.

True. And it's still around. It's FOSS now, runs natively on a Raspberry Pi 1-400 and Zero, and has Wifi, IPv6, and a Webkit browser.

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/

https://www.riscosdev.com/direct/