Last week, I had a discussion with a friend over the size of operating systems. It lead me to research different sizes required for operating systems.

Windows XP: At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk

Mac OSX: 5GB of available disk space

Ubuntu: 15 GB of hard-drive space (although this can be split onto 2 drives, a 5Gb / and a 10Gb /home fairly easily)

Windows 7: 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

...wait for it...

TinyCore: 10 MB. Yes, Ten Megabytes. That's 1600 times smaller HDD space required as compared to Windows 7.
 

I couldn't believe it! How could an operating system these days be so tiny? I rushed to find a way to get it. Not to quick to trash my current OS, I installed VMPlayer to emulate TinyCore and used the .iso (image file) to load up.

My first observation about this incredibly small operating system is that it literally takes 15 seconds to load up.

TinyCore is a bare bones Linux operating system that is specifically designed for developers and administrators to configure to their personal liking. Talk about open source configuration and freedom! If you don't want it, you don't need it. And with all other operating systems, if you don't need it, chances it's already there. But not with TinyCore - if you need it - it's NOT there! You literally start from the ground up. 

Ask any die hard Windows user to try this and s/he'll tell you its the ugliest, most useless computer in the world. Honestly, I can't say it's got all the dancing bears and whistles that most other OS' have today, but what it lacks in aesthetics it gains in speed and performance. To save a little face - at least TinyCore comes with a handly little dock at the bottom of the screen that points to Exit, Apps, Control Panel and Terminal. Enough to get you started :)

There are several modes of operation. Theoretically your entire computer can be kept on a 2GB USB key. How awesome is that? In he default case, you can use TinyCore as a Cloud/Internet utility. What that means is that your primary use for the operating system is an interface to the internet where all you apps live. For example, if you're using Google Docs, then you wouldn't need to install OpenOffice because it's all online, so no need to use up HDD space. It's all in the RAM.

One thing I needed to learn about the operating system (the hard way) is that it is not persistent. In other words every time you boot up, you have a fresh RAM installation as if it was the first time you loaded TinyCore. This could be a little frustrating if you've installed Firefox and imported your JSN bookmarks only to find them lost when you reboot! There are workarounds to this, and you can definitely back up your data so that it boots up with the same configurations as the last start up. Just make sure you read up on how to do this, because I spent some time playing around with applications only to find them wiped out of RAM :)

With the power of the cloud, I beleive this is where computers are headed. A whole lot of RAM, wireless access, and a huge HD screen :)

What do you think?

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