Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamnothere | Hacker News Reader

Tiny Core requires less than 50 MB of RAM and a 486. I like DSL but I’ve come to appreciate Tiny Core more. If you have a use case for an extremely light Linux system I recommend it. (I like it for single app GUI VMs.)

View on HN

Agreed, Tiny Core Linux is made exactly to run on old and low-powered PCs. But you can think of a more radical solution: take inspiration from Tiny Core and, using frontier LLMs, build your own tiny and personal Linux. With this solution expect a long work, but in the end you will have a system designed for you, that fits your needs perfectly.

This may be appropriate for embedded devices that don’t have a network connection, but it would be a lot of work to keep a fully custom distro up-to-date and secure, even with LLM assistance.

Implementing a network stack, maybe with reduced functions and written directly in C and/or Assembly, should keep the size of the OS low. It's a lot of work, and at some point you will need to make a careful evaluation between the effort and the result you want to reach. Also it wouldn't be bad if you allowed a certain margin of flexibility: 60 MB instead of 50 MB shouldn't be a big problem, and a lot of assembly code fits in 10 MB. For updates you need to plan a dedicated repository, because the software has to be dedicated, not use packages from the standard distros. Yes, a hyper-optimized 50 MB system is a lot of work, and in fact embedded systems generally have very outdated software versions.

You went from building a personal Linux (doable but probably not worth it) to building your own OS with bespoke network stack.

Honestly, I’m skeptical that this would be worthwhile unless the new OS itself is the end goal. There’s no shortage of hobby OSes (many now built by some lone dev using AI), but among these projects, most don’t make it past the first point release.

Even thinking your way through the requirements of a small OS is a lot of work. It’s not impossible, but unless you want to get into OS dev, it’s probably not worth the energy when there are already a number of decent options.

Building an OS is a demanding job, and it becomes even more so if you decide to make the work public, because at that point you take on a commitment towards the people who follow you. If the project stays for private and personal use, well, an LLM helps us and then we update the work when we feel like it and have the time. LLMs are an extraordinary tool, but they don't answer the questions "what do you want to do with it?", "are you able to take on and keep a commitment?". As with all things in life, it's always a question of balance: how much do we want to spend for a tool that maybe could turn out to be not very useful? And what is useful? A 50 MB OS might not have many practical uses, but it would force us to study, and a lot. Could you put a price on learning new things?

Not everyone has the time or inclination. I would even say that most don’t.

With some learning and patience, I think I would have the capability to make an exceptional modded car that has interesting features. But I’m just not interested in spending my time that way!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com