14 DAY TRIAL // The Tiny Core team has announced that piCore 5.2.1, the Raspberry Pi port of Tiny Core Linux, has just received a new version and is now available for download, featuring a few important updates.
The Tiny Core developers are actually responsible for a larger number of other distributions that are built with the same foundations. As it stands right now, there is the Core version that is a command line-only OS, the CorePlus OS that can only be installed and not run as a Live CD, and the TinyCore Linux distro, which includes the base Core system and X/GUI extensions for a FLTK/FLWM graphical desktop environment.
“Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce the availability of piCore 5.2.1, the Raspberry Pi port of Tiny Core Linux. It is an independent system architected by Robert Shingledecker and now developed by a small team of developers with strong community support,” reads the official announcement.
piCore 5.2.1 follows the same principles as the original Tiny Core distro, which is only a toolkit that can be used to create a customized system. The developers have explained that it only runs in RAM, users are not forced to install anything, and extensions are mounted read-only.
The operating system is so small that the main raw SD card image, with the CLI version, only weights about 21.5 MB, and this includes the RPi boot loader, firmware, and support files.
The biggest change in the piCore 5.2.1 operating system is the update for the Linux kernel, which is now at version 3.13.6. Incidentally, Linux kernel 3.13.6 is also the latest, most advanced, and stable version available.
Also, the RPi firmware has been upgraded, the protection of TC scripts against bad extensions has been improved, the kernel modules required by USB 3G adapters have been added, the kernel modules required to connect to a WiFi AP with SHA encryption have been added, and a number of issues that caused the modules to not be found in /usr/local/lib have been fixed.
A complete list of updates and changes can be found in the official announcement. Download piCore 5.2.1 right now from Softpedia.
Raspberry Pi relies on an ARM processor with a clock speed of 700 MHz, 512 MB of RAM, an SD card slot, and a 5V Micro USB connector that supplies the power. It also features RCA and HDMI ports.
If you are not familiar with the Tiny Core family of Linux distributions, you need to know that this is a modular-based system with community-built extensions. It usually implements the latest Linux kernel vmlinuz 3.0 and a 5MB core.gz.