piCore is the Raspberry Pi port of Tiny Core Linux, distributed as raw SD card images for versions 5.x. The system runs entirely in RAM after boot with boot media unmounted, defaulting to Cloud Mode where extensions download from repositories over the Internet and mount read-only. File system changes do not persist across reboots, delivering a clean state each time (http://tinycorelinux.net/5.x/armv6/releases/README).

Mounted Mode requires a second ext4 Linux partition for storing extensions and manual backups that restore automatically on boot. The first VFAT partition holds the base system, bootloader and firmware and remains unmounted with no writes after initial boot. Partition resizing uses fdisk to delete and recreate the second partition with the original start sector followed by resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2 after reboot; default RAM-based zlib compressed swap equals 25% of available memory (http://tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html).

Original README coverage from the 5.x era omits support details for later Raspberry Pi models requiring updated kernels and firmware, as documented in subsequent Tiny Core Linux releases (http://tinycorelinux.net/). Related minimalist distributions such as DietPi on Raspberry Pi demonstrate parallel patterns for low-resource edge deployments with similar RAM-focused designs (https://dietpi.com/docs/).