The smallest possible Linux distribution
18 points by linkdd
18 points by linkdd
Shout out to ELKS which, by definition, is a kernel subset, but can get the job done. I recently had a 386 system with 8MB RAM boot it off of a floppy, then serve web over a SLIP connection with both the server and the site content also on the floppy.
I remember using Tom's RootBoot disk back in the day. I used it to book Linux on a 4MB laptop (with a 120MB hard drive) and I think I eventually got Linux installed on it.
The smallest distro they link to leads to a deleted page...
I've documented a slimmer/tinyconfig based version that can be accessed over serial in https://github.com/romforth/tlb
Like LFS/Linux From Scratch, it is meant to be "build it yourself" except you can do it without building the entire toolchain (twice!) since it can be built using all the tools that are already available in the Gentoo livecd and has the nice result that the kernel clocks in at just ~1MB
I'm sure there's a way to make a smaller Linux distribution. I think using Fiwix and combining it with a small userland written in Forth would be a correct path, though the sanity of such a system would be interesting to see.
Taking the exercise to the absurd: the smallest possible Linux distribution, as of now, probably would be a Linux 0.01 kernel (104kB binary) with a super-minimal init (probably possible to fit in under 512 bytes, definitely doable in 1kB). Though the init will probably need to be placed on a file system, and that would require a few more kB. This is, of course, assuming we're not allowed to tweak the kernel to remove "unnecessary" parts of it (but then at what point it stops being Linux?)