Just as a different approach: It's actually trivial to set up a system without
X! Simply do a
Debian base install (
netinstall without any meta-packages chosen[/b]), and you're there. I've also used
tinysofa (but I reckon the projects dead),
Slackware, [http://www.openbsd.org/]OpenBSD[/url] and
NetBSD that way (of the BSDs,
NetBSD has the easiest installation (IMHO) - and it runs on all the platforms you named (in contrast to most Linux distributions -
Debian's not bad, either, though). In fact, every true server distribution should offer an
X-less mode... but most won't support all of those platforms.
If you'd like to get an impression of
Debian on the cli (and extremely well done, at that
), use
Finnix. It's an
X-less live CD with a lot of useful tools. Something similar for
Slackware is
SystemRescueCD, though nowadays, it comes with
X, but still boots to cli (so does
SLAX, btw. ...).
You can easily test these distros by using
QEMU, even from WinDoze, btw. - I usually carry a couple of them around on my USB stick (no kidding!) for use at work or in places I can't use a live CD (
DSL is a real treat that way
- and it also uses framebuffering for its tiny
X system - maybe you get lucky there...).
Or if the machine's even older, there are (apart from
Slackware's old versions)
TomsRTBT (running from floppy
) or
Trinux (both systems haven't seen any real updates lately, though, and are quite dated). I've used
TomsRTBT for my first steps, along with
Leka Rescue Floppy, but that project has regrettably gone for a long time now...
Maybe I'm heading in the wrong direction here - but if you take only the first two paragraphs, you should be able to set up a TTY only system...
M.
Abstract Console and LinuxConsole: Text Only Linux Without VGA
