1 Introduction 1
1 Introduction
ttylinux is a small, minimal Linux distribution. It is freely available as a bootable CD-ROM image. The entire
source distribution that builds the bootable CD-ROM image is also freely available.
This document provides information about using and installing ttylinux. The audience of this document should
be comfortable with using the Bash command line.
The word ttylinux has no capital letters, ever. ”TTYlinux”, ”TTY-Linux”, ”TtyLinux”, ”Ttylinux” and all other
usages of a capital letter or extra symbol are wrong. When spoken, ttylinux sounds like ”t - t - y - linux”.
Using the ttylinux source distribution and building ttylinux are beyond the scope of this document. The source
distribution has a short text file describing how to build ttylinux. When available, the Developer Guide describes
building ttylinux.
1.1 ttylinux Overview
ttylinux tries to use as little space as possible and be a familiar and complete command-line Linux system, with
fairly up-to-date Linux kernel and program utilities. It provides multi-tasking, multi-user Linux with networking
capabilities in no more than 8 MB of disk space. It is prepared for Internet access by Ethernet. A text-based web
browser, command-line remote login secure client and server, NFS client and an FTP server are a part of ttylinux.
ttylinux can be installed onto a disk drive, both spinning hard drive or flash drive such as a USB memory stick;
it can be manually installed or installed by using an installer script. Installation by installer script or manual
installation can be done with ttylinux itself or by using a different Linux system.
The ttylinux file system, excluding the Linux kernel, is 8 MB in size. Using the ttylinux installer script, a Linux
kernel of 2.5 to 3.5 MB will also be installed. This makes a minimum workable size of about 12 MB for a hard
drive partition on which to install ttylinux.
ttylinux includes a package management script capable of installing, removing and querying software packages
and their files. The package manager can list and install packages from an external repository via http. Pacman
is useful for adapting ttylinux to specific needs.
What ttylinux Is Not
ttylinux is not a typical Linux distribution; it does not have a graphical user interface, software development tools,
music player, document preparation nor printing tools, databases nor network services such as BIND, News Server
nor Mail Transfer Agents.
What ttylinux Can Do
ttylinux is intended to be useful as the basis of an embedded system or a directed-purpose system: with its small
size ttylinux boots quickly from flash drives and CR-ROM; it has been used as a system fix/repair tool, as a
simulation host, and is a good basis for a rescue or installation CD-ROM.
ttylinux provides a working Linux environment with its boot image, and custom task-specific scripts can mount
other parts of the file system to provide a larger system.
ttylinux is useful on computers which are considered obsolete, such as 486SX PC. It is for people who want to
have a minimal Linux distribution to run when little space is available or needed. Some users may want to use
the ttylinux file system but configure and build their own Linux kernel.
ttylinux 9.0 1
