On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 8:53 PM, Hugues Moretto-Viry <hugues.more...@gmail.com> wrote: > Just because I'm really curious, I'm searching minimal GNU/Linux > distributions with the following options: > > - x86_64 architecture > - minimal installation > - no default Desktop Environment > - rolling release
I don't know which are rolling release and which aren't, also I think most of them are 32 bit only, but below you can find some Linux distributions I found closing to these requirements. (Of course I didn't try any of them myself, but I've read about them). Boot from RO media, doesn't require a RW disk: * http://alpinelinux.org/ -- would give it a closer look, I think it's the most "mature"; * http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/ -- nice idea, don't know how "stable" it is; Could be made to work with RO media, but suitable for RW disk: * http://www.slitaz.org/ -- tons of packages (old and new), but the package manager is kind of buggy...; * Ubuntu Core -- comes as a `tar.gz`, containing only the minimum necessary tools to run Ubuntu; For embedded, but usable on x86: * OpenWRT; But now about the feasibility of such an idea: * I tend to agree with Hadrian Węgrzynowski, when he says it's better to have a very stable "core" (kernel + basic tools), and then maintain customized version of a few packages; * I currently would just take the packages from a "mainstream" stable distribution (like Debian), and replace their package manager with something which extracts just some paths (like `/bin`, `/lib` and ignores docs, man pages, etc.) Ciprian. P.S.: As someone remarked earlier it's unclear what you want such a distribution for: (a) desktop usage, (b) rescue usage, (c) appliance usage, (d) something else?