Small linux distrubitions

I keep my old notebooks because they are cheap and small servers. They don't need much power, are silent and have keyboard, mouse and screen included. I use small linux distrubitions to run linux servers on old 256MB RAM notebooks. My IBM ThinkPad T20 with Intel Pentium III 700 MHz, 256MB RAM and DVD is not dying.

I try to cover four different linux distributions. Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, SliTaz and Tiny Core Linux.

Damn Small Linux: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/



The goal is to have a linux distribution in a 50MB package. It is based on Debian and it needs only 128MB of RAM.

DSL has a nearly complete desktop, it also has the ability to act as an SSH/FTP/HTTPD server right off of a live CD.

The desktop has XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, Netrik web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor (Ted), three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano [Pico clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript printer support, NFS, Fluxbox and JWM window managers.

A package list offers lots of additional packages. You can install DSL on hard disk too.

Puppy Linux: http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm



The goal is to have a beginner friendly linux desktop in a 100MB package. It needs 256MB of RAM.

It is using JWM to have a Windows XP look.

There are Ubuntu and Slackware binaries available.

And there is a ARM version for RaspberryPi too: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PARM

SliTaz GNU/Linux: http://www.slitaz.org/en/about/



The goal is to have a linux distribution in a 35MB package.

SliTaz GNU/Linux is a free operating system working completely in memory from removable media such as a cdrom or USB key.

It offers a LightTPD with CGI and PHP support, browsers (Midori or Retawq), sound support provided by Alsa mixer, audio player and CD ripper/encoder, chat, mail, FTP clients. SSH client and server powered by Dropbear.  It is usung Openbox as a desktop environment.

There are over 3000 packages available to install additional tools.

Tiny Core Linux: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/intro.html



The goal is to have a linux distribution with no extras.

By default, Tiny Core Linux operates like a Internet client. In Default Mode Tiny Core boots entirely into RAM.

Users run the Appbrowser to browse the repository and download applications.

In Mount Mode Applications are stored locally in a directory named tce on a persistent store. Applications are optionally mounted on reboot.

I used Damn Small Linux a lot because it was the first distribution I knew. They offer lots of packages that can be installed. But the last versions of DSL are needing too much RAM. I found Puppy Linux during my search for a EeePC linux distribution, but SliTaz is now my most used linux distribtuin. It can run with 32MB of RAM in text mode.

I installed it on a sd card (frugal installation) and boot from it if I need it. You can use the Tiny SliTaz Builder: http://tiny.slitaz.org/ to create your own version of SliTaz.

Crunchbang is nice too

Yup the good old DSL days.

A little bit outdated since Debian is running fine on the Raspberry Pi.

But the Pi does have 512 MB of RAM - so SliTaz is still good for really old laptops.

Can't believe you are still using a ThinkPad T20.

DSL and puppy are my 2 favs, or slightly more usage is ubuntu fluxbox.

When talking about small linux distributions, I always like to point out Alpine. It uses only 5MB of RAM at boot in the default config.

I use Crunchbang on my old notebook. Requires ~512MB of RAM and a ~700MHz processor (Intel celeron or better).

DSL fan here when it comes to older boxes

DSL was actually my first Linux I've ever booted into.  I thought it was pretty cool, so my adventure begin.  I've ran Puppy on a old Dell P3 with 128MB of Ram and it seem to run fast too.

Alpine looks cool, how about a very very minimal command line Linux distro? I've seen basic shells at like 1.4MB, not sure if there's any other really small ones.

The good old days of Damn Small Linux. Ran that on many old, really old machines. Tiny core is also very nice. For one of my clients I build a KIOSK/Interactive Advertisement distro with it. Super lightweidt and fast.

I've also wrote up some small alternative OSes, not just linux, over here: https://raymii.org/s/articles/Small_Linux_Distros.html

Meh i wouldn't do this.