Every Install Should Be Minimal

Hi,

A few years ago, I published a 530-page book about building a Linux desktop from scratch, using CentOS: install and configure a minimal system, then X11, then the desktop environment (GNOME 2 at the time), then a selection of essential apps. The book was quite a success here in France.

One of my favorite Linux memories is using the Debian "Bootable Business Card" image, but with the ethernet cable disconnected. It would warn about not having any repositories from which to fetch, but continue anyway, and build a seriously minimalistic install.

I also looked into Linux From Scratch once. That's the kind of thing I would gladly do as an experiment, or homeschooling project, if I had the time and wanted to do it in VirtualBox.

I don't think it's any surprise that the more experience a Linux user has, the more control they want over their system.

That doesn't mean always minimalistic, however. There is a great deal of benefit of having a default install that "just works", has the things I want without my having to remember to put them in first.

Once upon a time Red Hat had business card CDs as well. Then there is Damn Small Linux... FWIW, IIRC Scientific Linux also has a minimal build.

As far as the idea of all installs being minimal, I disagree. Minimal is great for servers and experienced users. Nothing about Linux is one size fits all and installation images shouldn't be either.

Try Tiny Core Linux.

I have. Tiny Core is interesting but not terribly useful in the real world.

You do the Debian "standard" install w/o desktop and that's pretty minimal, right?

Steven, it's about as minimal as a "standard distribution" install can be, I agree. Just un-check "graphical desktop" and that eliminates a ton of stuff.

The dependencies are not absolutely perfect, though, so putting in the GUI afterwords can take a couple of iterations to get everything. Or at least it has been in the past. Every Debian cycle makes things easier.

@caitlyn

Sorry to hear that you do not find Tiny Core useful.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of folks who do find a such minimal distro invaluable, and, after all, the subject in question directly involves minimal distros. A default Tiny Core intall is only 12MB with a GUI. I understand that Tiny Core is the smallest Linux distro with a modern kernel.

Of course, just like any other distro, one can add almost any packages to a Tiny Core install.

{sniff}

If it doesn't fit on a floppy, how can you call it "minimal".

:P

Pah. In my day we fit entire distros on fingernail slivers. Kids these days dunno nuthin.

Tiny Core used to "run as root" all the time. If that's still the case, it's still a show-stopper for me.

I'm pretty sure Tiny Core creates a user account that is not root. You start the system as user tc, and it looks like this is a password-less login. But you can add a password if you wish: http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:passwd

My first install was from a 5 CD set out of a Fedora Core 3 book I found.