Need small distro without a desktop or windows manager, just to run a single graphical app

Question

I need a small distro, that is stable. I don't need a full X server or window manager, I only need it to run one single application with a basic UI that consists of a viewport.

I would like for the distro to be as small as possible. 700 mb or less would be ideal.

Is their a base distro of ubuntu or similar that I can add whatever I need to it from the command line. Which basically is the kernel and some way of graphical output. I was thinking of putting Direct FB on it to render the application. Even a live distro would work.

Solution 1

Have a look at TinyCore Linux. It comes in two variants, one CLI and one including X.

The X version including a window manager and a simple desktop is about 12MiB. If you don't need a window manager, you can just start X and your application. A window manager is not required.

Solution 2

You could also try the aptly named Damn Small Linux:

Damn Small Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.

Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:

• Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)

• Boot from a USB pen drive

• Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run inside Windows)

• Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"

• Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install

• Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram

• Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)

• Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize

Solution 3

I recommend Arch Linux.

Doesn't include X or any kind of graphical interface, but you can easily install if you like, it is also tiny (529 MB), it has great support and the flexibility to whatever you want.

Comments

[user2914606]

Note: you do need X (or Wayland) no matter what to run graphics.

[v0k1c4]

Hi Marco. I think this is exactly what I will use. It is the perfect size an allows me to build up. I already downloaded the microcore and tinycore to get things moving. Thank you.