Absolute bare bones Distro

[Wyrmwood]

Typing this thread's title into google doesn't do any better than any of my other queries, so I thought I'd ask here:

Other than LFS - What's a good BASIC linux distro? I'm not quite ready for LFS although I did make it half way through - but I was just copying and pasting without understanding the nature of the flags, packages or commands. I just need a simple iso that'll install the bare essentials so I can start picking away at the filestructure, commands, etc etc. The only automation I need is the initial partitioning, mounting and maybe a gfx/eth0 device probe.

Everything I've tried so far (even with ALL options turned off) - still comes packed with "useful" tools, unnecessary directories, piles of ready-to-install tarballs, and other headaches. I just want to get a look at a barebones OS, break it, fix it, break it again, etc etc so I can get a feel for what's necessary - THEN onto LFS, and then I won't be so lost in redhat4es or suse server.

Until then - I'm off to google, download and install more bloated distros (unless I get lucky)...

Thanks!

Edit - hopefully this was obvious, but NO X-Windows - just a straight shot to the CLI, if I want a gui I want to get my hands dirty and install it myself...

[bird603568]

i would install slackware and only install the 'required' packages.

[Wyrmwood]

Gracias - downloading now. And the "essentials" slackbook.org is exactly the down and dirty guide I was looking for.

[masherscf]

It's been a long time since I installed Linux manually but...

Any half-way decent distro should give you enough flexability to have a completely barebones installation.

I guess the real issue is making the decisions yourself or having someone make the decisions for you.

About ten years ago, before windowseque installers, I installed slackware for the first time. I gotta tell ya, It took hours while I tried to figure out what packages I needed and which I didn't need.

Knoppix has to be pretty barebones to fit on a single CD.

[lordfoul]

Try out zenwalk core (http://www.zenwalk.org/) it used to be minislack which is an off shoot of slackware.

[jdhore]

i would say for a barebones Linux install, go with either Damn Small Linux (about 50MB) or Puppy Linux (about 75MB)...if you really want to go tiny, find yourself a copy of something like Minix that fits on a single 1.44MB floppy....(DSL and Puppy Linux both have a GUI, Minix doesn't)

[Wyrmwood]

MINIX turned out to be very cool - gave me something to do while waiting for slackware to download. Then there's minix2 and 3 - kind of nice to see the differences between the versions and MAN are those guys good at documenting "what and why". Thanks for the heads up.

[lonescout]

Think you can start pretty bare minimum there, then build the packages you want. If it's for educational purposes, may be fun, wasn't my cup of tea. If the LFS is too basic for you first run, you may want to give that a shot.

[simon]

You might want to look into Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/).

Or you could always just download the kernel for your architechture and take it from there :D

[jdhore]

You might want to look into Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/).

Or you could always just download the kernel for your architechture and take it from there :D

i believe the original poster said he thought LFS was a little to advanced for him...

[Wyrmwood]

Yep, LFS was a bit much, left out a lot of basics - kind of like a "build a computer tutorial" that starts with "ok - first plop in your ps, mobo, gpu, cpu, ram, drives and fans. Now we're ready to start".

But so far slackware is excellent, I've broken it 3 times so far (that's a good thing). Onto installation #4.

"Or you could always just download the kernel for your architechture and take it from there "

I like that idea - that'll be one of the first milestones, as soon as I get a grip on the genereral Mish Mash of things...

[simon]

i believe the original poster said he thought LFS was a little to advanced for him...

:confused: Sorry, I probably was half asleep :o

Out of curiosity Wyrmwood, what was your issue with LFS? The comments for each command are usually pretty good, and wikipedia is probably all you need for anything you don't understand.

[jdhore]

:confused: Sorry, I probably was half asleep :o

Out of curiosity Wyrmwood, what was your issue with LFS? The comments for each command are usually pretty good, and wikipedia is probably all you need for anything you don't understand.

for me, i tried LFS back in the day (about 3 years ago) and i hated it...it took me like 4 months before i had a working CLI in it (Gnome was easy to install)...for me, that's just too much work...i like OS's that work without a lot of tinkering (i'm a Debian-based distro man myself)

[Wyrmwood]

:confused: Sorry, I probably was half asleep :o

Out of curiosity Wyrmwood, what was your issue with LFS? The comments for each command are usually pretty good, and wikipedia is probably all you need for anything you don't understand.


Well, after wading through the partition/mounting exercises I began to realize a lot of flags/variables were just "copy and paste" - such as

"mke2fs -jv /dev/<xxx>" to make an ext3 file system and "mkswap /dev/<yyy>" to make the swap file system, and THEN on to mounting (I come from the MS partition world, I didn't know anything about mounting, not to mention the "dev" folder, "bin" folder, etc etc. I didn't even know the concept of a flat file system.

Luckily, using slackware as a baseline to get the generic concepts out of the way, LFS is a piece of cake now. I guess I was just looking for something LONG WINDED during the tutorial.

In retrospect - I should have just pushed my way through it and figured out why it worked later.

[synack]

I just want to get a look at a barebones OS, break it, fix it, break it again, etc etc so I can get a feel for what's necessary

Edit - hopefully this was obvious, but NO X-Windows - just a straight shot to the CLI, if I want a gui I want to get my hands dirty and install it myself...

Sup Wyrmwood,

have you considered moving to the dark side of the force

and looking into BSD? if you have installed Slackware, the FreeBSD installer

should look familiar. The handbook is a excellent resource and your should

make friends with it;

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/

You are landed on the command line and you can get your hands dirty with

source code ( /usr/src ) as well as learning about the ports and packages

system (what do you think the gentoo 'emerge' system was based on?).

Have fun,

synack.

[Wyrmwood]

have you considered moving to the dark side of the force

After getting a clean LFS install to a working cli (wasn't that hard) my next milestone is to do a full blown slackware server - apache, mysql, php, bind, exim, iptables, and the wonderous world of virtual hosts (without the aid of cPanel) - this should give me a better idea of how cpanel and phpmyadmin REALLY works.

Then onto OpenSuse and FreeBSD. FreeBSD by the way is the alternative to redhat that my colo uses (the planet), so it's worth getting dirty with.

But god do I love slack. The ultimate milestone will be to recreate the steps of Volkerding (modding SLS) and finally the original Linus Symphony (minix to linux)...

Then I can close this chapter and find something else to obsess over.

[bird603568]

why opensuse?

[Wyrmwood]

Just for the sheer, unadulterated hell of it. There's kind of a cool history of the original slack/suse origins and then the redhat aspects that started to get put into suse... More of a history lesson than anything else. And, of course, I just like loading new stuff and poking it with a stick.