Do you have an old PC lying around gathering dust? How about a small-capacity USB flash drive sitting, unloved in a drawer? You can reuse your old computer and a USB flash drive by installing a tiny Linux distribution.

Mini Linux distros are great as they require fewer system resources than other options yet still deliver a whole operating system experience, and we have nine of the smallest Linux distros for you to choose from.

  • spittingimage
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    9 months ago
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    Don’t use Tiny Core Linux. The wiki is a mess of articles for two different versions, neither of which is the current one. Sign-up to the forum has been broken for years and the owner seems to like it that way because the same happened when he created Damn Small Linux.

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
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      9 months ago
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      I think Tinycore is more like a learning tool than a daily driver. If you want to know the basics of how a Linux system boots you should read the book.

      I especially like how the entire system is basically one big shell script.

        • SuperSpruce
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          9 months ago
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          I’ve programmed Arduinos and microcontrollers, including one with an ARM Cortex M4 CPU. In all cases, I just write C code on my computer and download it onto the board with a USB cable. No OS needed.

        • Possibly linuxEnglish
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          9 months ago
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          Don’t use it for anything important as its not well maintained. You should either use buildroot, openwrt or Debian.