21 MB Sized Operating System
Having a minimalistic approach to Linux is the mindset that I personally try to strive for, especially making older hardware run as if it was new. My Linux journey started during my masters degree and continuing to progress throughout my interests in operating systems, specifically to minimize what is pre built into an operating system. This led me to moving from distribution to distribution such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and then finally to Arch Linux which I use as my go to linux distribution.
One day, I found an abundant of 1GB flash drives that I found in an old junk drawer, and it came to my attention that there are indeed currently up to date operating systems that don't need even that much of memory to be able to boot and run from a live USB. Although the ISO file for Arch Linux is a little bit over 800 MB and can certainly be booted from a 1GB flash drive I was looking for something even more compact. A quick google search shows many operating system that takes even less memory space than that.
This is where I stumbled across TinyCore Linux, which depending on which core ISO download you select. You could start of with just a command line interface and have an entire operating system with 16MB of memory space or the standard TinyCore which uses 21MB of memory space. There is also an installation for those that have a non US keyboard or only have access to a wireless network that has a total space of 163MB. Nonetheless, this is all significantly less than most operating systems today. Loading up TinyCore Linux on my 11 year old MacBook Pro, the interface was smooth and overall a great way to refresh my old hardware and give it a new life.
领英推荐
Overall, TinyCore might not be what you're looking for as a daily driver, but this extremely lightweight operating system has its place in the world for small deployments and generally an exciting project for anyone that has an interest on making the most of their older hardware and still have it function for certain tasks. I will say, if you love Linux, I whole heartily believe that TinyCore is something to check out.
I would love to thank all the developers on this project and happy to see this tiny operating system still being maintained. Keep up the good work everyone!