Best Use for an Old Laptop (version 1): TinyCore Linux

Like many computer geeks, I have more unused computers than I know what to do with.  Old hardware is often considered to be obsolete when often the preinstalled MSWindows operating system went pear shaped.  I know that Linux can breath new life into almost any hardware, so I have a hard time letting older machines go.  Unfortunately, they often don't have the needed components to be fully usable — what good is a computer these days without networking?

TinyCore Linux is an ultra-small Linux desktop; the 4.0 release is just under 12MB.  TinyCore is stripped down, so don't expect the bells and whistles of a more active desktop, such as KDE or OSX or Windows has.  Instead, its claim is that it runs in RAM and it runs fast, which is great for older hardware.

Recently I wrote a brief review about a fantastic little USB Wireless-N card from Edimax.  This hardware is supported in Linux 3.0 and in the later 2.6.39 kernels, and the recent release of TinyCore Linux 4.0 includes the Linux 3.0.3 kernel.  This sounds like a winning combination!

Let me tell you, it is a winner.  I downloaded and installed* TinyCore to an old NEC Versa FXi laptop (P3) which has 192MB of RAM.  I installed Firefox 7 (well, Minefield 7, an unbranded Firefox) and I disabled as many of the startup programs as I thought I should, leaving behind only wifi, firmware, pci-utils, and minefield7 to start at boot.  My Edimax USB network works perfectly and Firefox 7 is great, and the whole Pentium 3 boots up in about 40 seconds.  Not a speed demon, but it works.

(* Firstly, its come to my attention that the TinyCore4 ISO mightn't have the installer; you must download that from the package manager.  MultiCore, on the other hand, is what I tested and it does have the installer and its available in the same place.  Just make sure to boot into MultiCore, and install TinyCore, not install MicroCore (which is included in the MultiCore ISO).  Get it?  Whew.

Second, and I'm not sure why, but after the OS installation I was unable to install software; I had open user permissions in the system directory with this at a command prompt:
sudo chmod -R u+rwX /mnt/sda1/tce/
and after that, everything worked fine.  I tried a few 'sudo' fixes and the like, but only this worked.)


Unfortunately,  nearly all of my RAM and my swap is filled when running Minefield7, so browsing isn't as smooth as I'd like; adding swap space (192000) to /mnt/sda1 helped a bit.  I also installed Dillo which is a much smaller web browser and works well for most of my needs, so Minefield may be moved to an on-demand app instead of on-boot.  There is also a Firefox v2 browser available, which is rather small also.  Either way, the laptop is usable for web reading, document work, emailing, and the like.  Video is out of the equation, including Flash like YouTube.  Good enough for many of my needs and its rather zippy if I respect its limitations.

I've only tried it on my NEC Versa FXi Pentium 3 laptop, which doesn't have any of its own networking hardware (not even ethernet), but TinyCore works great.  My laptop doesn't even have a scroll option on its touchpad, so within Firefox I've installed the Firefox extension "Grab and Drag," and I set its Preferences to Reverse so that its more like a touchpad scroll.  Next up will be my Pentium II laptops... how old is too old?

If you have any older computers I suggest repurposing them with TinyCore and this Edimax USB network dongle.  I plan to keep this laptop in the kitchen, perhaps wall-mounted, to help display recipes.  Thanks to the TinyCore team for their excellent work on the TinyCore distribution!

If you have any experience or tips with TinyCore or another lightweight OS that I should try, such as Puppy or SliTaz, please let me know in a comment!