Are there any distros left that don't use python &/or perl?

Seems to me, everything has a multitude of these programming languages in them these days, where are the distros that only use C?

Python and perl interpreters are supplied to run programs including many fundamental apps.

SpamAssassin uses perl; Freecad uses python, and window managers use some. There are many similar uses, because in some cases, they're the right answer and cut development time.

The short answer tho your question is that yes, you can do it, by loading a Spartan window manager and doing without whatever doesn't work. But I wouldn't recommend it.

For no Python or perl probably 15-20 years in the past. By the way no distros ever only used C as they all heavily use bash shell scripts and use awk and sed.

Python is very popular for GUI programming as interpreted languages have higher productivity (no compile/link cycles) so any distro that has GUI utilities likely will use Python. The installer for Fedora and RHEL/Centos named Anaconda is a Python script.

Perl is less popular as a general language but is still useful for processing text. The script to sign files for secure boot is a perl script.

No.

Note that git (which is a Linus project) is partly in Perl.

I was actually about to say Gentoo until I remembered that Portage was written in Python.

I imagine you're reducing yourself to Tomsrtbt and equivalents. AFAIK, even damnsmalllinux uses one or the other.

Yeah, you really don't want to remove python from a gentoo system.

Guess how I know ...

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just an additional comment:
In general: deb based systems use perl based package management system, rpm based have python based one.
Why do you want a system without perl and python?

Systems have become somewhat bloated these days, when I started, I had a 45MB RedHat 4.2, a 50MB RedHat 5.0, & a similar Debian 2.0 install.

Nowadays, the majority of distros are including all but the kitchen sink - there are smaller ones, & I use one, but it makes me wonder why they have to put it in the basic distro instead of letting the user add what they need.

Of course, most of you will realise this is very much a tongue in cheek question.

general systems are now a general, "full functional" desktops, not only a simple OS. That's why they contain a lot of preinstalled things. If you need a minimal install you need to look for a minimal distro (or prepare one for yourself)

I tend not to view Perl and Python as alternatives to each other like some people seem to. To my mind Perl is firmly in the system tools layer along with things like bash/awk and the other utilities, while Python belongs higher up the stack as an application development language: along with some of the more FOTM stuff like rust or go.

IMO Perl belongs in a base install, but not Python. I don't mind core system components being implemented in Perl (where appropriate), but I don't like the idea of them being written in something like Python: though if you asked me to rationalise that stance, I probably couldn't, so it's clearly just my own personal dogma.

Whether Python is an appropriate choice for the DE layer components I have less firm views on, but it's probably fine.


Disclaimer: personal opinion! YMMV.

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You can do it this waqy. Do LFS; Enter BLFS, and add what you need. All commands and patches are given.

That would be one way, I would also look into the minimal "busybox" based distros. I bet there is at least one that has no PERL or Python dependency. If not, we could easily build one based upon CORE (TinyCore) or Puppy.

On an embedded system I might care - maybe. On anything else my basic reaction would be "WTF, where does this come from !!!!".

Even my pi3's have all the tools I need - mindless "minimalist" demands are so last century IMHO.

+1 on that!

Seems to me that as available hard drive capacity increases, so does the number of people wanting minimalist systems. Weird. Got an 8 TB hard drive? Stick TinyCore on it.

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