I was wondering if there are any small BSD or unix releases. The smallest Linux release I've seen that looked good is partedmagic (around 70MB). Free BSD needs like 4 CDs, maybe more.
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3I can't help myself to point out that the thing you refer to as Linux is 'just' a kernel running on top of the GNU operating system. What you're trying to say is GNU/Linux. – Daniel Sloof May 04 '09 at 22:52
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9Oh, I bet you could have helped yourself.... – Charlie Martin May 04 '09 at 22:57
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1This might be a good candidate to make wiki – Charlie Martin May 04 '09 at 22:58
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@Charlie: It's good to aggregate this stuff and move it to stack overflow. Gives us more traffic and makes the site a better resource. – Daniel May 04 '09 at 23:07
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Excuse me, but what counts as a small distro? A 70 MB OS seems awful small nowadays (even if it wouldn't fit into the 48K on my first personal computer). – David Thornley Dec 03 '09 at 20:43
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6@Daniel: Actually the super tiny embedded Linux distros are exactly the sort of systems that are likely to NOT be running the GNU userspace. Many are running busybox with ulibc for userspace. – Cercerilla Oct 22 '10 at 21:07
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@CodeninjaTim: s/ulibc/uClibc/ – ninjalj Oct 22 '10 at 21:49
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2@ninjalj: You're right. Looks like I the whole letter. – Cercerilla Oct 22 '10 at 22:11
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Should be moved to http://unix.stackexchange.com/ – Atiq Rahman Apr 21 '13 at 08:45
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Small Distros
- Tomsrtbt ~1.7M
- Tiny Core Linux 10mb
- miniBSD 80mb
- Jailbait (Linux) 16mb
- ByzanineOS (Linux) 32mb
- Puppy Linux 94mb
- Damn Small Linux 50mb
- Damn Small BSD 50mb
- BerliOS (Linux) 180mb
- Hacao (Linux) 70mb
- mfsBSD 25mb
Single CD BSD Distros
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3+1 for up to now being the only one that understood OPs question. – Daniel Sloof May 04 '09 at 22:54
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There are a few good tiny linux distros. How small are you looking for?
The first two that spring to mind are Damn Small Linux (DSL) and Puppy Linux.
DSL is <60MB and Puppy is less than 100 MB
Check out Distrowatch for a very comprehensive and handy list :)
ParoXoN
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I believe DSL is actually <50MB, but 50MB is less than 60MB, so you're technically correct. – Chris Lutz May 04 '09 at 22:52
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The best kind of correct! I was just playing with DSL-embedded (for USB keys) yesterday and with qemu etc. it winds up exceeding 50 MB. The standard iso is 49.9 MB though ;) – ParoXoN May 04 '09 at 22:56
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+1 for DistroWatch, but DSL and Puppy are not BSD or Unix.. So +0 – Daniel Sloof May 04 '09 at 23:10
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True enough :S I interpreted the question as "do you, members of SO, know of any small unix/unix-like distributions?" – ParoXoN May 05 '09 at 03:51
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You bet.
- DSL ("Damn small linux")
- MINIX (certainly in the UNIX family and some nice modern features)
- there are a number of small to very small Solaris versions
Charlie Martin
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Yes, there are. Google is your friend.
Example (#1 on google 'bsd small'):
http://code.google.com/p/evoke/ 70MB FreeBSD live environment.
There are plenty more.
markus_b
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Here's a small linux distribution that fits in 50Mb.
http://damnsmalllinux.org/
Steve Lazaridis
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To say that FreeBSD requires 4 CDs is a little silly. You can use the network installation CD "boot-only" to do an install of any scale for desktops or servers. It's under 50MB. Then, it only has to download the appropriate packages that you need. If you want something a little more custom and one of the requirements is that it be installed without a network connection, I don't think any of the small distributions previously recommended in this thread will be able to offer enough software packages to make it any more viable than a network install of FreeBSD.
Nolte
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1Linux provides everything that was in the old UNIX certification tests. – Charlie Martin May 22 '09 at 16:09
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Not to mention that the question mentions the smallest Linux distro he liked. Really, who thinks Linux isn't satisfactorily in the Unix tradition, and why not? (To be technical, only a few OSs can legally call themselves Unix, and I don't know that any of the free BSD distros can. The most widely used thing that's officially Unix is Mac OSX.) – David Thornley Dec 03 '09 at 20:46