I feel that Tiny Core Linux really only appeals to people with one focus: small size. Much the same way OpenBSD, while an interesting project, is really going to appeal (almost exclusively) to people whose primary focus is security. There’s nothing wrong with those things, it’s just a very specific niche. And size isn’t a niche which draws my attention these days. That being said, I wanted to take a look at Tiny Core Linux 4.2 because of a new edition added to the project: CorePlus.
CorePlus, according to the project’s website, is “a simple way to get started using the Core philosophy with its included community-packaged extensions, enabling easy embedded frugal or pen-drive installation of the user’s choice of supported desktop, while maintaining the Core principle of mounted extensions with full package management.” CorePlus isn’t quite as tiny as the main edition; instead of a 10 MB ISO image it comes as a 48 MB download. Still quite small by today’s standards.
Booting off the CorePlus CD brings up a menu giving us the option of which environment we’d like to use. The list includes FLWM, Joe’s Window Manager, Fluxbox, Hackedbox, IceWM, plain X and the command line. While each graphical environment is slightly different, what we generally get is a simple interface with a sky blue background and a launch bar at the bottom of the screen. The launcher contains icons for shutting down CorePlus, opening the distribution’s control panel, bringing up the extension manager, opening a text editor, launching a virtual terminal and handling WiFi connections. Digging around a little we can find a system installer, basic GNU userland tools and the 3.0 version of the Linux kernel. It’s all quite compact and the environment is very fast to respond. It really is a minimalist system upon which we can add the pieces we want.
Read Full Review at Source Web Site: distrowatch.com
