Anybody got any ideas of a decent list of the MINIMUM pacakages I need to use one machine as a simple File, Print and Internet server, as well as a simple HTTP server (local Intranet).
I don't need to even have a GUI (Gnome or KDE) or even any multi-media stuff on this machine.
The simpler the better.

Basically these are all I need to do with the server

SAMBA to share with Windows machines, Also file share NFS and printer share with Linux clients.

MySql, and Apache for web server

Internet connectivity (via firewall) for local LAN. This just needs to act as a Gateway -- I don't need to surf the internet on this machine.

Anything else on this machine would IMO just be Bloatware.

(CD / DVD read /write also required but doesn't need multimedia. I can share the CD/DVD devices and use the Client machines when I need multimedia.)

I would just like the simplest SERVER system possible and am not afraid of using the command line.

Thanks for any help on this one.

(There might be better distros for this but having used SUSE for a long time and happy with it I'd rather stick with it than mess around with (for me) a totally different distro with all sorts of possible unknown problems. I'm on the whole not a "tinkerer" and just want to get a smallish private LAN and private Intranet up and running).

-K

Given how many program files there are that's quite a question. If you're mostly concerned about performance packages installed on disk may not matter much. What's running is of course more important. YaST can be used to to identify what's running and what's not. You could conceivable remove services not be used with YaST. When uninstalling YaST will tell you if something you remove affects another package. Most servers like apache aren't installed by default and YaST will help you install dependencies. The only way to skinny down the kernel is to recompile. That can be scarey but the process is very question answer oriented. When you install SuSE you get a chance to select KDE, Gnome or "minimal graphics". That would certainly give you a good start. Minimal graphics provides you with a text in windows kind of YaST and its looks different from the KDE and Gnome YaST. I know this isn't quite what you asked but perhaps it can get you where you want to be.