Re: Thoughts on TinyCore

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 9:35 PM, Trans <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am curious as others thoughts on TinyCore from a GoboLinux perspective.
>
> You can read about the overall ideas of it here:
> http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/concepts.html

Hi there,

I didn't hear of TinyCore before you sent this out. Thanks for the link.

The concept looks similar to that of a LiveCD, except that LiveCDs
usually uncompress data to RAM from e.g.: squashfs on demand. Their
"Cloud/Internet Mode" would work like GoboLinux LiveCD otherwise,
which also allows one to install apps that will be discarded on
reboot.

TinyCore's "Mount Mode" is nice. That concept is frequently seen in
embedded devices like cell phones and set-top-boxes. The Appbrowser
tool seems to be the one in charge of taking care of arranging paths
and environment variables.

The "SCM Extensions" (their packages) are what most resembles
GoboLinux. I especially like this figure:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/arch_scm.html

These extensions are squashfs images that are mounted on run-time and
have their binaries linked to their system's $BINDIR.

I don't know how they handle dependencies, though. That's not covered
on Ibiblio's description page. It would be nice to have an overview on
that. Have you heard of anything on that regard?

While we're on this subject, I read tonight an article that shown up
on Slashdot on Bedrock Linux. They too have some interesting ideas
using chroot and PATH manipulation:
http://opensource.osu.edu/~paradigm/bedrock/introduction.html

Thanks,

-- 
Lucas
"If you're looking for a reason I've a reason to give: pleasure,
little treasure"