Tiny Core Linux 9 on a 1st gen Raspberry Pi

As Raspbian is becoming bloated and will not run that fast on an old 1st generation Raspberry Pi (especially with GUI) I started to look for and alternative distro. After searching I came across Tiny Core Linux (TCL) - a tiny and quick distro which loads entirely to RAM and runs from there. TCL can be downloaded here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/ports.html. The image is only 50 MB in size and fits on any SD-card.

If you are still with me and are going to flash TCL read on very carefully. After flashing use Gparted on Linux (I have no idea what to do if you have Windows) and enlarge the second partition so that all the software and extensions you are going to install fit on your SD-card (see next phase below).

Now, fire up your Raspi and TCL. Type-in the following command: tce-load -iw TC. Make sure you are wired to the Internet. When TCL has downloaded and installed all required packages reboot your system. A graphical user interface should show up.

I tested TCL on an "old" 1st generation raspberry Pi (not the very first one though!) with 512 MB of RAM. It took ~ 10 seconds to boot to CLI (that is no graphical user interface, command-line only) and 20-30 seconds to GUI. Not bad! Besides you can remove the SD-card if you like. The whole OS runs from RAM memory! Cool!

Ok, enough for now. Still to-do: keyboard layout is US and needs fixing. No apps installed so I need to find some sort of tool for that task. I'll be back!

TCL with GUI

Composite video!

Time flies! 2011-12!