TinyCore 16 VMs on Sculpt OS

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With the release of Sculpt OS 25.04, I updated my Firefox-VM to TinyCore16 and built similar VM-based appliances for Thunderbird and KeePassXC. You can find the corresponding runtimes in my depot index.

I’d also like to share a few more details about how I’ve set up these VMs.

  • The VMs use a remastered TinyCore16 ISO image, i.e. all system modifications are temporary.
  • The runtimes request a “vm” and a “shared” file system. The former is used for storing the iso and machine.vbox6. I’m usually routing this to recall_fs. The “shared” file system is mounted as a shared folder within the VM and made available at ~/Downloads.
  • The Thunderbird-VM requests an additional “data” file system, which is used for persistently storing the profile-data from ~/.thunderbird.
  • The dedicated application is launched in an infinite loop so that, once closed, it is immediately re-launched.
  • I enabled the kernel modules vboxvideo, vboxsf and vboxguest for resizing, shared-folder and shared-clipboard support. I’ve noticed that, on rare occasions, the shared clipboard gets stuck.
  • I’m using i3wm with a stripped down config file. There are bindings for launching a terminal (Alt-Enter), closing a window (Alt-F4) and restarting the shared-clipboard agent (Alt-r).

If you want to take these VMs as a basis for building your own appliances, feel free to fork my tinycore-remaster repository.

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Thank you :folded_hands: for the guide. I have had a brief hands-on with Firefox in Seoul on the Release Candidate. Armed with your guide of how to configure in Lietzentrale, I look forward to having another go when back home next week.

I am using Firefox in both Linux and Haiku (where it is known as Iceweasel) and being able to sync with my Mozilla account will definitely encourage me to spend more time in Sculpt.

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I’ve updated Thunderbird VM and also added a customizable TinyCore VM with a persistent /home:

  • The new Thunderbird VM does not use a “data” file system anymore but stores another .iso file in the “vm” file system. When first started, it asks for a password and sets up the data iso with luks encryption.
  • The customizable VM comes with a persistent /home and /mnt/sdb. Both are backed by separate .iso files in the “vm” file system. /mnt/sdb is luks-encrypted (same as in the Thunderbird VM). I’ve added a few helper scripts for downloading and enabling AppImages. On first start, you need to open a terminal (Alt+Enter) and run app-enable. Currently, you can
    enable (i.e. download) keepassxc and libreoffice. I’ve also tried onlyoffice and xournalpp but haven’t spent the time to find solutions for the startup errors (have a look at ~/.local/apps.mk). Once enabled, the selected app autostarts on reboot (and after closing the app). If you don’t want to make use of /mnt/sdb you can remove the exec mount-sdb from ~/.i3/config.

Thus, if you wanna experiment with other AppImages, please go ahead. I’ll happily add more AppImage-URLs if you send me a patch for ~/local/apps.mk.

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