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LINUX: Free book for the Tiny Core Linux distro

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40hz:
This was recently posted over at Distrowatch:



Book Review (by Jesse Smith)
Into the Core: A look at Tiny Core Linux by Lauri Kasanen

 "Your DVD player doesn't need to print. Your thermostat doesn't need to browse the web. The Core project is here to provide you a base to build on, one that includes nothing unnecessary," reads the back cover of Into the Core. Tiny Core is a Linux-based operating system which approaches computing with the philosophy that it makes more sense to start with very little and add required components than it does to start with many unwanted components and remove them. In the book Into the Core Lauri Kasanen explores what Tiny Core Linux is, how it works, the distribution's approach to working with software packages and how to get the most out of the diminutive operating system.

Into the Core is different from most of the technical books I review. While most of the texts I read and recommend start with very few assumptions about the knowledge of the reader, Into the Core is not here to hold our hand and start from square one. People reading Into the Core should already be comfortable using GNU/Linux operating systems and should have, according to the text, "no fear of the command line." That being said, while we are expected to be comfortable editing configuration files in a text editor and passing boot parameters to the kernel, the reader is not expected to know anything about Tiny Core Linux itself. This book is also unusual in that it focuses almost exclusively on working with the Tiny Core distribution and much of the material covered will not be transferable to other Linux-based operating systems. The book walks us through the beginning stages of working with Tiny Core, installing the operating system, setting up our data files and tweaking the initial configuration. Once we get settled in with the Tiny Core basics then the book ramps up, getting into package management, the pros and cons of certain types of configurations and how to make the most of boot parameters.

As we proceed through the book we learn how to make our own Tiny Core extensions, remastering the operating system and making our own boot codes. Along the way the internals of the Tiny Core distribution are laid bare and we are invited to explore the inner workings of this surprisingly low-resource operating system. There is a certain elegance to its simplicity and compact nature. I like how, as Kasanen walks us through the various steps of customizing Tiny Core, we are shown examples, sample output and, where appropriate, screen captures. I found these examples made the text easier to follow and kept me on track when working along with the included projects. <more>
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I just downloaded and gave it a quick skim and it looks to be very useful. Grab a free PDF copy here.

Find out more about Tiny Core Linux here.

 8)

ewemoa:
Also skimmed it -- looks like one could spend many hours tweaking!  IIUC, the version of the book I looked at seems to cover the 4.x series -- the most recent version seems to be 5.2.  Not sure how different the two series are but details might be available via the Final Releases section of the forums.

Thanks for sharing :)

40hz:
^From what I can see, the major changes seem to have been uodating the kernal to 3.8.13, busybox to 1.21.1 , and Xorg to 7.7 which shouldn’t affect the information found in the book very much if at all.

Thanks for sharing
-ewemoa (March 11, 2014, 07:07 PM)
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You're more than welcome! :)

ewemoa:
SCM extensions seemed to have been dropped in the 5.x series:

  http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,15895.0.html

Found this confusing because:

  http://tinycorelinux.net/

mentioned:

There are no major changes to the base, but X libs have been updated to Xorg-7.7 and imlib2, libjpeg and libpng have been factored out of the base. In addition, sce extensions have been dropped from this release.

--- End quote ---

May be a typo (sce -> scm)?


Found this nice picture:

  http://tinycorelinux.net/arch_core.html

I guess it hasn't been updated for 5.x.

Stoic Joker:
Hm... If I could get Samba running on the base core edition/version(?) in a VM. That would be a perfect place to study/play with Linux.

(Don't mind me...I have these moments periodically)

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