Recommendations for a Ubuntu or Debian live cd / iso with small memory footprint ?
 

Hi folks,
Basically I'm looking for an Ubuntu derivative or another Debian based LiveCD / vmware image which I can run on XP using VMPlayer. The main hurdle to overcome is that the machine has only 256 RAM. DSL / Puppy linux work ok, but I am not after a GUI environment - only command line and with Perl built in for good measure. There must be ways of say re-mastering an Ubuntu distro so as to strip out all of X and any Graphic environments ?

Cheers !
uc

Hi -

Here's a quarter: buy some RAM.;)

Just set your default runlevel to "3" (instead of "5") and - viola! - you log in to mode (no GUI overhead).

And of course if you want *really* small/lean/mean, there's always:

* DSL
* Knoppix
... and, works quite well even in small RAM/small HD/slow CPU environments ...
* Puppy Linux

'Hope that helps .. PSM

PS:
Puppy Linux is the VM I fire up most frequently on my Vista laptop when I need to run some kind of Linux, but I need to boot to Windows.

Just install Debian from the netinstall CD and un-check 'desktop environment' during the install at the package selection screen.. no X no Gnome, heck you don't even get sshd. it's a very bare bones installation. you can then build from there what packages you want.

Ubuntu LTS Server edition does not install a GUI by default either if I recall correctly, but I do not know what their default package set is like.


Are you saying the HOST PC for the VM has only 256 MB or that there is only 256 MB of RAM available to be assigned to the VM environment.. Either way that's very low for just windows without any VM.. Do yourself a favor and buy some RAM for the Windows box, it must be crawling as it is... :)