I'm running Ubuntu Hardy on my Dell Inspiron notebook for day to day stuff requiring X, but it's too much sometimes. Like wardriving, for example. I know I could just kill X, but I want to a) learn more about the "guts", and b) decrease power usage to the absolute lowest I possibly can.

So, what I was thinking is that I could install a second, super cut-down debian with the bare essentials (gpsd, kismet) and maybe a few other daemons. Play around with recompiling the kernel and removing as much as I can, etc.

Is that a dumb idea? Is there a better way? I appreciate any input!
Chris

If you want it to be really small, and only have the programs that you want -- look into Linux From Scratch.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

So you don't think I'm crazy, huh? That's good!

I forgot about LFS. I'll check it out.