[CALUG] Minimalist Distro

[Rajiv Gunja]

Ben,
If you are installing a server and want a bare minimum of packages
installed, then I suggest you take a look into Kickstart, ks.cfg. As you do
not need GUI for servers, this is a better route as most Distributions
available online has some kind of GUI installed or it might not have the
scalability or full support from its community.

With ks.cfg, you can install only the things you need or want. Yes, you will
be able to install more packages when required. I have not used kickstart
with debian based Linux, but it works well with Redhat / Fedora / CentOS.
With these major Linux distributions, you can get a lot of help from their
communities as to how to tweak your kickstart file (ks.cfg) to a very small
foot print.

One of the many examples online:
http://www.owlriver.com/tips/pxe-install/FNAL_ks.cfg

Hope this helps.

-GGR
--
Rajiv G Gunja
Blog: http://ossrocks.blogspot.com


On 24 January 2010 19:52, Ben W <bigmojo74 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Relatively simple question here, I'm looking for as light of weight - and
> current - distro as I can find for a server. I'm only realy familiar with
> Debian variants and am thinking of building off a base install, but I'm
> curious if there's anything anyone else would suggest?
>
> *By lightweight I realy only need to be able to get onto a network out of
> the box, I'd prefer to build from as little as possible than sift through
> services and cut out what I don't need. They'll be the basis for a woefuly
> underpowered processing cluster, if anyone has any additional input on that.
>
> Thanks
>
> _______________________________________________
> CALUG mailing list
> CALUG at unknownlamer.org
> http://lists.unknownlamer.org/listinfo/calug
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.unknownlamer.org/pipermail/calug/attachments/20100125/88fa13ab/attachment.htm