

Tiny Core offers a complete Linux solution in 11MB - thomas
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/tiny-core-linux-offers-a-complete-linux-solution-in-11mb-2010107/

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listic
Strangely, while mentioning Damn Small Linux, geek.com doesn't mention that
it's the same person, Robert Shingledecker, behind it and Tiny Core.
Apparently, there's been some drama involved
(<http://www.shingledecker.org/andrews.html>) and Shingledecker had to leave
Damn Small Linux to stagnation, while Tiny Core is reincarnation of his ideas
on a new level.

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tptacek
What's the smallest conceivable reliable distro I can host Rails (or, better,
JRuby/Rails) on? Getting it up and running on Tiny Core seems like a Project.

~~~
alnayyir
Is your time so lacking in value that you'll expend a substantial amount of
time rolling and maintaining a custom distro of Linux that'll save maybe
50-150 megabytes of RAM? Are you in the web hosting business or something?

~~~
tptacek
I have a Rails app I want to distribute as a VM to each member of my team.
What's the best option that's just 50 megs bigger than Tiny Core?

~~~
alnayyir
I was speaking in RAM, not the disk-space of a VM. I didn't know the context
of what you were looking for.

Is there some reason you can't accomplish this using RVM and a dev database?
Any specific software that makes you think it isn't practical to do so?

Virtualization seems a little heavy duty given the options for sandboxing
python and ruby apps these days.

Edit: You really really don't want to cope with the raw horror and pain of a
minimalist kernel that doesn't provide any of the things you usually take for
granted.

~~~
tptacek
Everyone on our team carries a Macbook; I need "click this to start the app
up" levels of simplicity, or nobody will use it.

I wasn't reading you carefully enough before; I don't care _at all_ about RAM
size. I care how big the distro is to download.

~~~
alnayyir
>Everyone on our team carries a Macbook

I work on a macbook too.

> I need "click this to start the app up" levels of simplicity, or nobody will
> use it.

Is that a political issue or have there been questionable hiring decisions by
someone?

When I'm talking about gift-wrapping it with RVM, literally all they'll have
to run is a well-made shell script to fire it up.

[http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/41816-howto-open-
termina...](http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/41816-howto-open-terminal-
shell-scripts-double-click.html)

Should do the trick, although you'll want to test it in Finder yourself.

I can't come up with anything easier than double-clicking on a shell script.

~~~
tptacek
This ignores Ruby Dependency Hell, which is why I'd want to use VMs in the
first place.

~~~
alnayyir
RVM exists specifically to solve ruby dependency hell. Have you ever made a
sandboxed app with it before?

------
drv
Tiny Core is also a nice small, and therefore fast to download, payload for a
network-booted system with gPXE:

<http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/appnotes/tinycore>

