Re: [dev] Minimal distributions

From: Ciprian Dorin Craciun <ciprian.craciun_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:01:40 +0200

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 8:53 PM, Hugues Moretto-Viry
<hugues.moretto_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> Just because I'm really curious, I'm searching minimal GNU/Linux
> distributions with the following options:
>
> - x86_64 architecture
> - minimal installation
> - no default Desktop Environment
> - rolling release


    I don't know which are rolling release and which aren't, also I
think most of them are 32 bit only, but below you can find some Linux
distributions I found closing to these requirements. (Of course I
didn't try any of them myself, but I've read about them).

    Boot from RO media, doesn't require a RW disk:
    * http://alpinelinux.org/ -- would give it a closer look, I think
it's the most "mature";
    * http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/ -- nice idea, don't
know how "stable" it is;

    Could be made to work with RO media, but suitable for RW disk:
    * http://www.slitaz.org/ -- tons of packages (old and new), but
the package manager is kind of buggy...;
    * Ubuntu Core -- comes as a `tar.gz`, containing only the minimum
necessary tools to run Ubuntu;

    For embedded, but usable on x86:
    * OpenWRT;

    But now about the feasibility of such an idea:
    * I tend to agree with Hadrian WÄ™grzynowski, when he says it's
better to have a very stable "core" (kernel + basic tools), and then
maintain customized version of a few packages;
    * I currently would just take the packages from a "mainstream"
stable distribution (like Debian), and replace their package manager
with something which extracts just some paths (like `/bin`, `/lib` and
ignores docs, man pages, etc.)

    Ciprian.

    P.S.: As someone remarked earlier it's unclear what you want such
a distribution for: (a) desktop usage, (b) rescue usage, (c) appliance
usage, (d) something else?
Received on Mon Nov 26 2012 - 20:01:40 CET

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