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Considering Linux distributions that are based on RPM. How can we have the smallest possible of these Linuxes in size with minimum number of packages?

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Fedora with the appliance kickstart will give you a tiny base to build upon. Be sure to edit the repos before using though.

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could you give some information about the link you have given? how can it help me? – Kamran Jul 22 '10 at 10:59
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thanks, but can you help me on another thing? on the Kickstart wiki page in chapter 3 it is written : "Refer to the repodata/*comps.xml file on the first CD-ROM for a list of groups[ of packages]." but I didn't find the file in my fedora 12 DVD (X86-64). where could I find that list? – Kamran Jul 22 '10 at 18:23
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It (or another file that ends in comps.xml or comps.xml.gz) should be found in repodata/. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jul 22 '10 at 18:38
there is another question came to my mind. in the first link, there is the aos.ks file that seems to satisfy my need. but I have a question about the file: when the scripts are defining the packages to be installed we see first of all it used the --nobase option means no base package group should be installed then it begins to specify the packages like kernel and bash individually.It is ok until now but I see after those specification it comes with removing some packages.as i read i think we remove packages when we dont want them from a group.but there was no group specified,even base ignored! – Kamran Jul 23 '10 at 15:13
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This looked promising:

RPM Live Linux CD RPM Live Linux CD is a 120MB RedHat-based distribution that runs completely from CD, fits into around 80MB of RAM and is nearly indistinguishable from a system installed on a hard disk. Features include hardware recognition at boot, samba, dhcpd, name, xinetd, and SSH servers, virtual terminals, PAM, etc. Useful for dedicated servers, routers, emergency systems, cluster nodes and such, it does not contain an X11 Server.

Unfortunately, distrowatch reports RPM Live Linux CD (aka Basilisk Linux) as discontinued, and the site is down.

Your best bet is probably to download a RedHat/Fedora/CentOS server CD or live CD. To minimize the number of packages, just don't install anything you don't absolutely need--such as X or any window managers (e.g., GNOME, KDE).

It's also worth noting that there are other, non-RPM-based distros, which have been stripped down to the bare minimum, yet still have some type of package manager. DSL (available as a 50 MB live CD) is one of the better-known tiny linux distros, and I don't think you'll find much smaller unless you look at embedded projects such as DD-WRT.

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You could use Suse Studio to build a tiny version of OpenSuse. The "Just Enough Operating System" base with all the defaults gives a downloadable iso file of 131MB.

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