Seven Linux distros fight over one old ThinkPad (DesktopLinux.com) [LWN.net]

Seven Linux distros fight over one old ThinkPad (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 7, 2006 1:24 UTC (Sat) by mikov (subscriber, #33179)
In reply to: Seven Linux distros fight over one old ThinkPad (DesktopLinux.com) by hein.zelle
Parent article: Seven Linux distros fight over one old ThinkPad (DesktopLinux.com)

The smallest useful Debian install I have been able to get without manual tweaking is around 120 MB, IIRC. (I may be off by +/- 30MB or so). It actually corresponds to the size you get from deboostrap. Perhaps it is possible to trim it down further by manually deinstalling selected packages afterwards, but that is really getting into the embedded realm.

Which is incidentaly how I used it - it fit with a lot of space to spare in a 512MB CF disk. It feels funny to do "apt-get dist-upgrade" in an embedded device, but it actually works like a charm :-)

(Log in to post comments)

Small Debian installs

Posted Oct 7, 2006 20:23 UTC (Sat) by kmself (subscriber, #11565) [Link]

120 MB is pretty good, and that's about what I get, with this package list or something close to it (pretty much debootstrap + vim, screen, and w3m and a few other tools).

Martin Krafft's The Debian System suggests that the smallest Debian install which could be considered a "real" Linux system is about 89 MB. Such an installation would likely not be particularly upgradeable: package lists and archives are large, I tend to allow 1-2 GB for /var just for that reason, and you'd likely run out of disk space with a highly constrained install.