Recently I've been set the task to deploy a graphical application (opengl) on a computer that will exclusively be dedicated for this. This computer is not the most powerful computer ever, so the distro needs to be very light weight, and don't have stuff like OS GUI which is not needed. In fact I only need an os that can handle sound, graphics, and network functions for just this application.

I know that they're some mini distros out there like the Damn Small Distro, Finnix, Puppy Linux, etc, but I would like to have the opinion of others in this scenario. I'm looking for a final memory usage of less than 256 mb.

I know that debian has a custom install but I've heard people constantly missing important dependencies, and really don't know if its light enough.

Do you guys know about what is really needed for doing a graphic application run in a terminal based distro (excluding the project dependencies, and drivers), and which distro is light enough but suited for running graphic applications?

I've heard x server is needed for instance, not really sure.

Do you mean something similar to a kiosk linux; wherein it's just used in cafe's,etc to browse the net?

What graphical app is it?
Tinycore-the successor to DSL, has many pkgs and comes as a base 11MB iso;then you add pkgs you want- note that netbootcd-3.0 was built from tinycore-1.3.

Tinycore can be remastered for anything almost.
Try being more specific about exactly what u want.

Yeah! it will be a kiosk running an opengl game we made, more specifically using the ogre graphic engine and openal for sound. It was developed in debian, so I was thinking in copy-pasting the release, along with all the dependencies.

I'm a linux noob, so I'm gathering up some info before I start testing.

So you're saying tinycore can handle graphic programs by default?

Thanks for the help.