I want to run a lightweight Linux on VB. I need the newer kernel because otherwise my Lenovo/Radeon AMD graphics won't work. Also my wifi won't work.

Hopefully < 1GB download.

It would be nice if it's also not beta. I'd been learning with Porteus last year, but gave up after more than a little while because it has too many flaws (and the creator abandoned it, apparently). Though I did learn with Porteus about needing a kernel > 5.0

Having NO OFFICE suite is ultra desirable. Bare bones is okay, but not CLI only. This is for occasional use.

I have looked at various lists on the web, but none tell the kernel version - which to me seems like a glaring lack.

I'm a long time Windows user, and I hate Windows. Thanks.

Netinstall of whatever you like. Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Arch, etc. Netinstall iso's are usuall <1GB, and depending on installer either install just a BASE image that you build from there as you wish, or you can customize the build during install for some distro's.

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#1 VirtualBox presents virtual hardware to guest operating systems, including the video. I am not sure that diver will give you any advantage. Certainly the video is one area where native behavior is not approached.

#2 Likewise, unless you are using bridged networking, the NIC is virtual. The driver in the gues need only support the virtual options in VB, which are well established and supported.

#3 You need to do a search on DISTROWATCH and specify the kernel version, and you will find several options. Debian can be as heavy or light as you please, depending upon how and what you install. ARCH has some advantages in terms of small as well. Both are among the list of distributions that can provide kernels >= 5.6.

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VirtualBox does not have PCI pass through so GPU or wifi does not matter since VB virtualizes both graphics and network adapters. Although you can use USB devices attached to the VM like wireless adapters. This means the particular kernel version does not matter either. I have run DOS 6.22 and Red Hat 9 as a virtual machine.

Which distribution might depends on your hardware but just pick a lightweight distribution of your choice. I don't know which have the smallest ISO files. You can also download from osboxes which are compressed images of VDI disks i.e already installed versions.

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One of the fields DistroWatch allows filtering based on is ISO size - options are <100 <250 <700 <2000 >2000 >5000:
https://distrowatch.com/search.php?ostype=Linux&status=Active&isosize=Under+100MB

There is no filter for kernel version there, but - on the individual distro pages - a search for "linux (" should jump to the row which identifies this.

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On the contrairy, the search page allows you to specify the package and version you are willing to find.
Will find every distribution still active that comes with the Linux Kernel at version 5.0 or later.

Warning: that is a HUGE list, so you might want to narrow the search parameters to only look for ones with smaller install images, as mentioned above.
The options are all there if you look for them.

Ooops, thanks - my bookmark has the #simple anchor so I was skipping straight past the package search and had completely forgot about it.

Annoyingly, it's a distinct search - populating the fields doesn't affect the results of the "Simple Search Form" (nor the "Advanced Search Form") - though it is possible to manually craft a URL which returns both result sets, which at least enables cross-referencing with a browser page search (Ctrl-F).

See if Clear Linux might be useful.

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MX and AntiX are both nice lightweight distros.

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