2 Starting with ttylinux

This section has a general overview of the ttylinux download CD-ROM image and also describes the system hardware requirements for using ttylinux, from where to download ttylinux, 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 further described in section 2.3.

Installing ttylinux from the bootable CD-ROM onto a hard drive is described in section 3.4. Installation onto a hard drive makes a system different from the bootable CD-ROM; the installed ttylinux has a read/write root file system directly on a spinning hard disk or solid state disk, not in a RAM disk. The advantage of a hard drive ttylinux system over the RAM disk system is that file changes are not lost.

ttylinux can be put onto a flash drive, such as a USB drive, which can be made bootable. This copies the RAM disk boot method to the flash drive; when the flash drive is booted, the root file system from the flash drive is decompressed and becomes a read/write root file system in a RAM disk in memory. As with the system booted from CD-ROM, the changes to files are lost when the system shuts down. The process of putting ttylinux onto a flash drive is described in more detail in section 3.3.

The ttylinux root file system is a compressed image 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 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.