2 Starting with ttylinux

This section has a general overview of the ttylinux download image and also describes the system hardware requirements for using ttylinux, where to download ttylinux from, what to download and how to use the downloaded images.

ttylinux has three basic parts: a boot loader, a Linux kernel, and a root file system. All three of these are in the CD-ROM image; the CD-ROM image can be burned onto a blank CD-ROM disc and then booted. When booted, the root file system from the CD-ROM is decompressed and becomes a read/write root file system in a RAM disk in memory. Note that changes to any of the files while running ttylinux are lost, as they are in a RAM disk. Booting the ttylinux CD-ROM is described in section 2.3.

Installing ttylinux from the bootable CD-ROM onto a disk is described in section 3. Installation makes a system different from the bootable CD-ROM; the installed ttylinux has a read/write root file system directly on hard disk or flash disk, not in a RAM disk. The advantage of an installed ttylinux system over the RAM disk system is that file changes are not lost.

ttylinux can be put onto a flash disk, such as a USB drive, which can be made bootable. This copies the RAM disk boot method to the flash disk; when the flash disk is booted, the root file system from the flash disk is decompressed and becomes a read/write root file system in a RAM disk in memory. Changes to files are lost when the system shuts down. The process of putting ttylinux onto a flash disk described in more detail in section 2.4.

The ttylinux root file system is a file on the CD-ROM; it can be copied and used with a different custom kernel, one that you make, and put onto other media, or file system image, with your boot loader of choice. This process is beyond the scope of this document, but the requirements for a ttylinux custom kernel are described in more detail in section 2.1.1.