tomsrtbt is a very small Linux distribution

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...

. It is short for "Tom's floppy which has a root filesystem and is also bootable." Its author, Tom Oehser, touts it as "The most GNU

GNU

GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...

/Linux on one floppy disk", containing many common Linux command-line tools useful for system recovery (Linux and other operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s.) It also features drivers for many types of hardware, and network connectivity.

It can be created from within Linux or Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 95, 98 or ME running in MS-DOS mode, but not (on floppy) from NT, 2000, XP, or Vista (as their floppy driver does not allow the extended format), either by formatting a standard 1.44MB floppy disk

Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...

 as a higher density 1.722MB disk and writing its image to the disk, or by burning it as a bootable CD. It is capable of reading and writing the filesystems of many operating systems, including ext2

Ext2

The ext2 or second extended filesystem is a file system for the Linux kernel. It was initially designed by Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system ....

/ext3

Ext3

The ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It is the default file system for many popular Linux distributions, including Debian...

 (used in Linux), FAT

File Allocation Table

File Allocation Table is a computer file system architecture now widely used on many computer systems and most memory cards, such as those used with digital cameras. FAT file systems are commonly found on floppy disks, flash memory cards, digital cameras, and many other portable devices because of...

 (used by DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

 and Windows), NTFS

NTFS

NTFS is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7....

 (used in Windows NT

Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

, 2000

Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...

, and XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

) and Minix

Minix

MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel....

 (used by the Minix operating system).

A few of the utilities on tomsrtbt are written in the Lua programming language

Lua programming language

Lua is a lightweight multi-paradigm programming language designed as a scripting language with extensible semantics as a primary goal. Lua has a relatively simple C API compared to other scripting languages.- History :...

, and many more use BusyBox

BusyBox

BusyBox provides several stripped-down Unix tools in a single executable. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, FreeBSD and others, such as proprietary kernels, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with interfaces provided by the Linux kernel. It...

. Space saving compiler options were used throughout, the kernel was patched to support loading an image compressed with Bzip2

Bzip2

bzip2 is a free and open source implementation of the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It is developed and maintained by Julian Seward. Seward made the first public release of bzip2, version 0.15, in July 1996.-Compression efficiency:...

, and in many cases older or alternate versions of programs were selected due to their smaller size.

External links

• tomsrtbt homepage
• tomsrtbt wiki — with How-To
  How-to
  A how-to or a how to is an informal, often short, description of how to accomplish some specific task. A how-to is usually meant to help non-experts, may leave out details that are only important to experts, and may also be greatly simplified from an overall discussion of the topic...
  
  -style guides of some practical uses of tomsrtbt.