by Michael Reed
... Tiny Core offers a very fast experience overall, with a boot time that none of the major distributions can touch. On the other hand, if something goes wrong or you couldn’t find a runnable application that you needed, the remedies that work on other Linux systems may not work with Tiny Core.
Once up and running, you are plonked into a blue desktop courtesy of the FLWM window manager with an icon-based application launcher at the bottom of the screen. By default, there are icons to access settings, add packages to the system, mount disks and to launch the file manager, but there are no substantial applications at this point.
Tiny Core uses its own package format, but rest assured, the package repository is huge with thousands of applications that are ready to go. Adding a medium-sized application such as Firefox, for example, takes only a couple of minutes. When you install applications, using the GUI package manager, they are downloaded and then added on the fly, automatically popping up on the application bar. During the boot process, the user specifies the location of a directory to be used for settings and application packages, and on subsequent boots, Tiny Core automatically locates the files that it needs. Here again, we glimpse some intriguing technology as there are options for loading the application files into RAM or fetching them from the disk when needed ...
An intriguing but inconsistent mixture of the brilliant and the infuriating. Once the thing has been setup by someone with expertise, the the system could serve as a great advertisement of what Linux can offer on the desktop. It’s a shame that it’s a couple of scripts away from being an absolute corker.
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/tiny-core-3-5-review-a-blend-of-the-brilliant-and-the-infuriating/
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