Required Minimum Programs for GNU/Linux Installation
 

Hello all,

I've been a user of BSD and Linux for approx, 5 years now and I am currently looking at compiling my own install from source. Starting with the base Linux kernel, what programs would I need for a base, minimal install? Just to boot up, locally log in and go to bash. I had planned on pulling down the most recent required GNU programs, determining their dependencies, and compiling them from source, as well. I hate just taking any technology for granted without understanding its makeup and how it operates.

I am doing all of this as an educational experience. ;) What I would like to learn is, the sequence of events, how code and hardware interacts, what is required for a bootable system and doing it for myself, though I know it would be easier to just pull down a disc with it all done and be ready to go.

Thanks in advance,
-sed

Then you should consider having a look at linux from scratch at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Linux from Scratch comes to mind (tedious to build even for an experienced guru)...

or...

Crux is a nice minimal distro that is mostly bare bones with Xorg-7.2 which is a great distro to build up a custom system, i just built Linux-2.6.21.2 on it just this morning and i am waiting for Alsa-1.0.14 to get officially released (it is an rc for now)...

I'll have to check out LFS. Does it contain the bare minumum programs/packages that is needed? I'm intersted in an absolutely no bloat base install. After doing a little research, I built a database of dependencies (based upon only grub and the kernel) and came up with these core files:

• bash
• binutils
• bison
• coreutils
• diffutils
• findutils
• flex
• gawk
• gcc
• gettext
• glibc
• grep
• grub
• gzip
• kernel
• m4
• make
• modutils
• ncurses
• perl
• sed
• texinfo

I also found a really good site containing a lot of information in a single respository for those who may be interested:
Fultus eLibrary

wow, you really want a "bare" bare bones system, i think there is a distro that comes on two floppy diskettes (cant remember the name of it just now)...

floppix :p

LFS isn't really a distro if I understand it. It's a series of excellent docs on how to build your own system. You get exactly what you want and not one byte more.

You can build a system so lean it won't even work :p

Outstanding. That's basically what I'm trying to do. ;) Sounds like I'll have something to do over the long weekend! Thanks to all for the assist.