Both Tiny Core and Micro Core Linux can be quite powerful and efficient solutions, especially for embedded machines, and installing applications from within the Tiny Core desktop environment is a simple process that uses their custom application browser. But what if you are trying to nstall an application from Tiny Core's terminal interface? Or better yet, from Micro Core which doesn't have an application browser? There are two easy solutions to this problem, though not a lof of people I speak with seem to be aware of it, so I thought I would post it here.
First, Tiny/Micro Core comes with an application called tce-load, which is utilized for loading Tiny Core repo packages. As long as you have an active Internet connection, you can use this to download and install any package from the repo, supposing you know the name of the package you wish. For example, if you wish to install the Fast Light Window Manager in Micro Core, you can run the following:
$ tce-load -w -i flwm.tcz
The second option is to use the command-line version of the application browser. First, just use tce-load to install it as follows:
$ tce-load -w -i appbrowser-cli.tcz
And then you can launch it and browse your applications very much in a similar manner to it's GUI counterpart.
$ appbrowser-cli
That's pretty much all there is to it! From there, you should be able to customize your Tiny Core or Micro Core distribution with little effort.
It's worth noting, however, that if you run the appbrowser, do not run it as root, otherwise it will fail to run properly.
