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What Is "Small"?

Different people have different ideas about what a small, functional Linux installation might involve.

  • In some cases, application selection can lead to enormous savings.

    • Xfce instead of GNOME or KDE.

    • Mutt instead of a graphical mailer.

    • Links and/or Dillo instead of Mozilla.

    • Less featureful X server and configuration.

    Consistent choices like this can get a machine down to running happily in 24 MB or 32 MB of RAM on a slow processor.

  • One person's idea of functional might be unusable to another.

    All of these systems have different requirements:

    • One disk firewall or router.

    • Forensics disk.

    • Linux Video Recorder.

    • Developer desktop on low memory, low diskspace i486.

  • There are trade-offs between disk usage, memory usage, resposiveness and boot time.

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