seems forum support for Crux is not strong

The differences are not so big that you couldn't master them in a day or two. And the Gnu tools and utilities you want to learn at the console are more or less the same. Crux is a nice minimalist system but to make it usable I always ended up with around 4GB disk usage. Slackware without X, KDE and Xfce is probably around 5GB. Is it really worth the hassle?

@bsmile,
maybe consider this?

here is another thread on a minimal install that has some useful infomation
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5600473

Read the init scripts to learn more. A bare-minimum system which boots to cli and is extendable comes to around 50MB. Everything else is cream.

Slackware 11.0 is the last release that featured zipslack. Could you not use that as a template?

How about Slacko? Its about 240 mb in size. Its compatible with Slackware packages.
http://slacko.eezy.xyz/download.php

The conventional advice about a full install is the most "right" answer, I think.

Culling your distro doesn't save much, and really what is 6Gigs in an era of terabyte hard drives?

I walk this line myself by doing a full install of L, no KDE, no games, and then remove things I don't
use on an a'la carte basis- news readers, seamonkey, emacs.. things I never use.

I'm coming on 20 yrs as a Slackware user, so I know what I need & don't at this point.

Watch the change logs- from time to time important things change.

I mostly slim my distro down to what I use so that there is less to download at update time,
but that shouldn't be a major reason for anyone. More of my own personal idiosyncracy.

If I want to get really small & minimalist I play with openLEDE on one of my routers or play
with an ardino. A few hours in that world and I am glad to get back to my "fat" Slackware
install.

It's all relative. I think fat os'es are here to stay. Lots of features come along with it. Not so much in the old days..



.

Not installing KDE, XFCE and XAP (which is what I do) takes a full install down to 5.75 gigs. That's big for a TTY only system, but with Slack you gotta take some bloat with the good. Emacs and kernel sources would be about another gig or so if you really needed it, which takes you to about 4.5, 4.75, but that's about as far as I would go. You never know what needs something in X, so it's probably a good idea to just install that and make life easier.

Without dependency resolution, you have to accept the tradeoff: bigger install for full functionality. For me, 5-7 gigs is a fair exchange for knowing that I should never have a problem building/running the TUI/commandline programs I use every day.

Could I run my current setup on another distro with less than 2 gigs installed? Sure could, and did for years, but that is NOT a fair exchange for what I'd be giving up without Slack.

@all,
Having a minimal system is useful in several scenarios (VPS, containers, VMs, learning, etc...)
Not all Slackware systems live in a multi-terabyte HD... and no: disk space is not cheap.
Not if you have to rent it.

@OP,
You should start with the functionality you must have and then try to reach JES (just enough slack) to have it.
If nothing else, you will learn a lot about dependencies.

To me, JES to get slackpkg working is a bare minimal for a useful (useful to me) Slackware system.
Once I get that base system, I need only use slackpkg to extend it (to a full install if needed).

Assumed we do an "normal install", once asked pick the following series:
a - most must be there
from this point installpkg should be available and able to install any further packages from local storage
l - some really nasty tricks avoided by this
n - for any networking to be easy done
from this point, slackpkg should be available and able to install any further series or packages
ap - for many really useful terminal based apps
from this point mc and most terminal based browsers are available

I would also recommend sbopkg and sbotools for most easy procurement of any non-Slackware packages there is on Slackbuilds.org

Not really Slackware, but you could try AntiX. They claim that antiX net weighs circa 150M.
https://antixlinux.com/antix-17-released/

No. Salix Core (as you suggested earlier), then slapt-get whatever else is wanted.

I forgot to mention. There is also Slackel. Salix's son. http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slackel

Debian?