I'm looking for a distribution with no extra software. I only want to run it as an internet tv browser. FireFox and the latest Flash Plugin are the only apps I need/want on the system. DSL doesn't run stable with GTK 2.x in order to install a recent version of Flash. What are the lightest distros that can handle these simple requirements?

Almost any distribution can handle your requirements. When you install throw out all of the packages you don't need. How you do that varies by distribution. Try one of the distributions which use the apt-get package manager system. Two popular apt-get based distributions are Debian and Ubuntu.

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Steve Stites

Thanks for your quick reply! I guess the question changes to which distributions come the closest to having nothing but these requirements.. (I don't want to be uninstalling packages for a month)

SliTaz linux (cooking version) is a 28mb download (smaller than DSL) and includes Firefox 3. Installing the Flash 10 player takes one command: get-flash-plugin

http://slitaz.org/en/

ps You will find that many Linux distros do not include Flash for legal reasons; however, it is very easy to install the player in almost any distro.

Thanks! That's one I haven't tried yet...

Use Debian. You want to get the "net install" CD version. I'd go with the testing branch but stable would work too. The net install contains only the bare minimum to run a system. When it asks you to check things you want to install, don't check anything. You can then install anything you need with the command line aptitude and any required dependencies will come with it, but nothing else. You'll need a window manager, but if you just want firefox (called iceweasel in Debian, but exactly the same software), you won't need a desktop environment. I'd still install a lightweight desktop like LXDE of Fluxbox though.