I'm looking to install an extremely light-weight flavour of linux on a USB stick. It also needs to be basically only CLI. Has anyone ever looked for something like this? Ever found something good?
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If you don't want to go from scratch, Gentoo is also a good start.– Tamara WijsmanOct 12, 2012 at 16:29
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6 Answers
To be particularly minimal, you could roll your own. Fair warning: this is an endeavor of many hours, but you'll better appreciate what goes into getting your OS pieced together.
Linux From Scratch is a very actively maintained step-by-step guide on just that: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
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2wow this is awesome! I'm definitely going to be going through this. Great learning experience.– n0peApr 1, 2011 at 21:54
Red Hat or Debian are probably what your looking for. You could also install Ubuntu as command line only.
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2Visited this page: help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD and trying that. Thanks– n0peApr 1, 2011 at 17:31
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This suggestion is wrong. Red Hat and Debian are built to support a wide range of software configurations. They are anything but minimal. May 1, 2013 at 0:20
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2NOTE: "ttylinux, as of September 2015, has been discontinued until a new maintainer comes forward. The home page no longer exists." (linux.wikia.com/wiki/Ttylinux) An old release can temporarily be downloaded here, although this site has not been maintained in over 2 yrs: freecode.com/projects/ttylinux Oct 25, 2016 at 4:49
Back in the day there was Linux On A Floppy (LOAF) and Tom's Root Boot. However I suspect they are too super light weight for USB drives :-)
Nowadays I suppose the equivalent is Damn Small Linux which will install onto a bootable USB flash stick.
answered Apr 1, 2011 at 21:09
Ubuntu Server might be what you are looking for. Because servers are usually headless, the basic setup does not contain any GUI parts.
