Welcome to the first review published solely on New2Linux! This is a new version of the reviews formerly found on KnoLinux.com. Why the change? Why take that hard work and put it somewhere else without the brand recognition? Well, call it pure spite. So many die hard MS bashers complained about my aspx extensions that I set out on a mission: build my own server running on my home bandwidth for free and stop the madness!!!! Will people like the new site? Not really sure if they care. The content will be the same, for the most part, but won't have the distraction of people flaming out on stupid extensions. We also added a forum to discuss the reviews if you wish, just have a look, give us suggestions and by all means if you wish to signup and help us, let me know.
While I typically like to stay closer to some distributions that are on top of the leader board on Distrowatch.com, once and a while something out there will pique my interest. I have always wanted to play around with what I would like to classify as a microdistro, one intended to be run on older hardware with a very small package behind it, but never found any of the most popular really to my liking. Mainly it was a lack of eye candy appeal and the fact that so much had already been published about these that I stayed away, minus the occasional trip into the wild.
So I was looking around for a new distro to run my server at home, and decided on PCLinux Business Edition, which then had a link in the community to another called TinyMe. I was curious as to what this might offer, being that I am a very big PCLOS fan, love my new BEL system that I plan on reviewing at a later date, so why not give this little fella a try? It seems to be rising up the ranks at Distrowatch so something must be decent about it. So let's try this little bug out and see if it can fly with the big dogs...
Details:
Website http://tinyme.mypclinuxos.com/
Download here
Kernel - Kernel 2.6.18.8
Desktop - OpenBox
FAQs - http://mypclinuxos.com/tinyme:home
Cost - FREE!!!
Special Features - Live installer, excellent icons/graphics, thin desktop to run on older machines with little to no RAM, awesome look and feel, sound foundation with PCLinuxOS under the hood
Nitty Gritty:
Installation ( )
One quickly notices the tieins to the parent distro for this, PCLinuxOS, which ironically is also a child of Mandriva. I guess this makes TinyME and grandchild distro? It eventually runs a live CD installer, but like the others, there are some necessary steps in between. The odd thing is that you need to do these things to run the Live CD, but they don't really relate to the actual installation. We will walk you through them anyway, just for giggles.
Here one gets to select some pretty simple items that look more complex than they are. Stick to the LiveCD unless you know what the others are for, trust me on that one...
Here you get to select the language of the keyboard....exciting stuff here huh?
Now you select your timezone.
So you can setup either hardware to local time, UTC time or setup NTP.
Here we setup the networking component. For me on my laptop this would go into wireless, but for my Vmware on screenshots I did the ethernet. I always like this wizard in Mandriva/PCLOS, because it allows for NDISWRAPPER or searching for the wireless drivers that might be already compiled into the kernel. This really is one of the better ones for laptops that I have used.
As you can see, when I selected Ethernet, the AMD for Vmware shoed up, simply click next...
Select the IP method, DHCP or Manual, for me DHCP...
A little too fancy for most, unless this is an enterprise installation, which would mean you have a very cheap company...
And when you wish this card to be started, for most people this would be at boot, unless again you are security concious and have multiple users...
Um, yah silly!!! Don't you love silly questions, next will be "Do you wish this system to actually work with the hardware that you have?"
So that wasn't too bad, but a little silly, I would think that there should be a page that allowed a newbie to select "Default automatic settings?" because I would imagine 9 out of 10 people will just click next. A lot of wasted time and effort really if you ask me...guess they didn't...
So the first screen you get is the login with a pretty background of water on a window. I like the look and feel, and of course if you have read any of my reviews you know I love Blue anything in the themes. The login for all PCLOS systems is username/password of guest/guest and root/root.
This really is a nice layout and supprisingly complete for a microdistro. The install icon seems to have wondered away from the rest, sticking clost to the acorn logo. I guess there must be some relevance with the nut. I like the selection of applications, with all the important items listen on the desktop. One thing they did extremely well was the look of the start bar, but we will talk more on that in the startup section.
When you click on Install TinyMe, you first get the step of putting in the password (hince why I alredy told you, so won't tell you again here 8-)
The Draklive installer is very common for all things Mandriva and has been discussed many times. It is a very solid, very methodical installer on par with Ubiquity.
The first real question now that you passed the password phase is what type of hard drive. This allows you to create a USB installation or a permanent one on a Normal Hard Drive.
 This was nice of them, let you know that you are about to take a step into the unknown, so backup what you need to first.  So, the partitioner is pretty simple and allows you to do some pretty nice things like Auto Allocate, clear all, undo and even and expert mode for the daring among us. First you need to right click on the white bar and select create a new partition.
 Once you finish you should see something like this window, I created my swap equal to double the RAM in the system (old habit) and the rest as root "/".  Duh Duh Duhhhhhhhhh!!!!! The next step is very, very dangerous....  This will now be a non functional entity, so don't reboot at this point unless you plan on using your live disc.
 Here you can go get a coffee, beer if over 21 in the states, 12 in the rest of the world, and wait out the install process.
That wasn't so bad, was it....back to the questions. Now we actually will put a boot loader on the system so it will work again.
Typical of Mandriva and Drak, doesn't really find other Linux partitions very well, so if you had some others you can add them here, but only do this if you know what you are doing.
Here is the all important root password. Make is something unique, not password okay? This is the one thing separating you from having a windows type experience with security.
 Now you can add your user login information
So why didn't this get a 5 pennie review? Well, basically it is getting old, having to make selections to run a live disc, only to then run an installation. I still say 90% of the people don't need the first parts, simply go into it and then let them make some of these decisions later. The one exception of course is networking, but even then that could be a part of the installation process. I did like that you didn't have to replicate the process over again, like I did with mandriva and pclinuxos, but still if you want to make a clone that is easy, but if you want to improve, take out what is bad and make it work a little bit better where you can. The people likely to install this will not have a lot of linux knowledge, otherwise they would be using gentoo or slackware.
Starting ()
What does work for this system is the look, feel and functionality. The pieces I never liked with puppy or DamnSmallLinux are the selections and lackthereof. Here you get some really nice pieces, such as Opera, Audacious, Synaptic for a package manager and Grafburn, which I think I read has been ported over to the TinyMe team to manage. This system really allows one to get a linux box up on older hardware that works right out the box and is easy to maintain.
One item I really like was TinyControlCenter (TinyCC). This really allows people a solid way to configure OpenBox, which isn't as easy as some of the others.
This also maintained the PCLinuxOS Control Center, which is extremely easy to manage the hardware side of the box. I love the layout and ease of which one can really make or destroy a system here. This is where the power of having a solid distro as your base helps out for newbie players when the other microdistro really leaves these people at the door wanting support but not knowing where to go.
 I always love how microdistros put this in the upper right of the desktop, it maybe a standard feature but really reminds me of what MS Vista wanted to do and what others need special tools to create. This really gives you a good idea of how your system is doing, and this is ultra important for older machines that are likely strapped for performance.
Bonus Stuff ()
I sent out a request to the leader of the pack at TinyMe, and will include the review once I get it back, if I ever do...
Overall ()
I am honestly pleased to give this package a 4 Pennie review. I have always shy'd away from the microdistro, affraid of wasting my time putting a system in place that really wouldn't meet my needs. I generally look at other distros, focusing on Enlightenment or XFCE so I am very pleased to know there is a openbox distro out there that runs on the tiniest of machines with enough horse power to even become a server if it wanted too. The power of PCLOS, combined with a package manager of Synaptic and a cute little control center to allow even the newest of the newbies a system they can manage makes this one hell of a package.
Where else will you be able to rescue that PC or laptop from 7, 8 or even 10 years ago? I see this really being the bridge for those still suffering from the death of Win98 with hardware they cannot afford to upgrade at this time, but need to be able to get online, do their kids homework or help run the families lives. With the new google docs, one really doesn't need a high end office bundle, so why not look towards a smallish distro powerful enough to get you online and be flexible enough to continue on offline if needed? For you people looking to be a part of a latest and greatest in Linux, minus the fluf of XGL and 3D items that really don't do anything but sell new hardware, this is a perfect solution to your issues.
Good luck in your Linux quests and as always feel free to let us know what you think. You can login to our Forum here and share your thoughts about this distro.
Cheers!!!
KnoLinuxGuy (Kevin)
Original link: http://new2linux.info/index.php/...
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