well. ty for reply all. ill wait till debian web site works and try ubuntu + debian =).

solution for my question = netinst or installing server only

Well, I've been thinking about giving NimbleX a go. Which raises the idea that the "Custom Nimblex" version/fork/flavour doesn't have anything unnecessary, because you decide what goes in.

But then you'll have looked at distrowatch and considered all of the frugal distros, won't you?

Gentoo you install it manually and you will learn a lot about how your system works in the process. the documentation is very good it will walk you through every step and explain what you are doing. when you are done you get a basic system with a compiler, basic utilities, working network connection and a CLI. no GUI included. then you 'emerge' anything else you want. It's not the easiest or the quickest to install, but you said you wanted something minimal that will allow you to learn and install everything yourself and that in a word is Gentoo. If you go this way and need help send me a PM.

could be better. but i already installed centos5. i have a gentoo cd too. after tried all of them. ill write here =)

For me the point is ease of use. I dont't want to have to set up samba just to connect to a windows network. Even if I will only have to connect to a win network once or twice - or even more so if I only need it on occasions... same goes for lots and lots of applications.
Install a reader just for a pdf, install extra codecs for a real-media stream.

I use CentOS 5.2 right now, and it's a reasonably bloated distribution IMO. CentOS is definitely not what I'm thinking of when I say "minimalistic system"

I just don't get why people will automatically shout "GENTOO, SLACKWARE" everytime a thread like this comes up. The OP asked for a minimal install, not a source based system. The obvious answer is: use the netinstall of your favorite distribution.