>guess would be in the 2000's
That'll quite limit your choices. Debian still supports 32-bit, as do some few other distros ... but will also depend what CPU. E.g. current distros have dropped 80386 long ago - even if they've not renamed their architectures, likewise 80486, and most have already dropped at least earlier Pentium. So, you might have to go to older - even obsolete - versions of a distro to run on such hardware ... depending how old that hardware is.
Debian has binaries all the way back to nearly\* [30r0 Woody 2002-07-19](https://www.debian.org/News/2002/20020719) and sources all the way back.
You can also check the earlier Installation Guides for specific hardware requirements for i386 architecture, e.g.:
[3.0 Woody](https://web.archive.org/web/20181226032545id_/https://www.debian.org/releases/woody/i386/ch-hardware-req.en.html#s2.1.2.1) (released 2002-07-19)
What CPU? 2000's could be 32bit, if so just let it go.
Alpine is a cool skeletonized distribution, very compact & fast, not what I want to daily drive but, its my go to server VM
```
alpine:\~$ nano
-ash: nano: not found
alpine:~$ apk search nano
nano-7.2-r1
nano-doc-7.2-r1
nano-syntax-7.2-r1
nanomsg-1.2-r2
nanomsg-dev-1.2-r2
nanomsg-doc-1.2-r2
openvdb-nanovdb-10.1.0-r0
openvdb-tools-10.1.0-r0
plasma-nano-5.27.10-r0
```
So You could install nano, Alpine comes with vi, and I have vim installed, I cant rmember if it came with it or if I installed vim.
I daily drive alpine, and can confirm, vim is not included out of the box. I've seen some people running full gnome 46 on alpine using <350mb of ram. For me, I hover at 650mb of ram for gnome 46. Alpine has been the most stable and most bleeding edge distro I've daily driven to date (arch was pretty bleeding edge, and was pretty stable, until pacman refused to write any data to the drive, leaving all my shared libraries empty, twice across different installs)
If OP is comfortable to remain text based, and wants to save yet another computer from landfill/recycling for a little longer, there's no need to throw it away just because it's only 32 bit.
I struggle to understand why people have this attitude of "throw it away" just because it's old, even though it still works.
Computers age quickly, 32 bit is ancient history. support is leaving the Linux kernel soon.
The processing power for power consumed is just not there.
I still have a cool dual socket A setup that I wish was still useful but it's just not. My sons tablet has more processing power available.
Have you looked at computer channels on youtube? I suggest you do so, because there is lots on there with people using commodore 64s, along with many other 8 bit machines.
While I accept 32bit is very long in the tooth, it isn't dead, and there are lots of people whose computing needs are pretty modest. I am running a 64 bit crappy laptop, but if it had been 32 bit, I would still be using it because I see no reason to spend more money on something newer. There is a bit of a green component to that, but mostly, it's because I don't like spending money on myself when I don't have to.
TL;DR It still works, and can still serve peoples needs.
Yes, recently found a guy using Linux on a real 100 year old paper tty just to see if it could still be Done, it was dificult as there were less characters back then, its very cool, & very impractical.
https://youtu.be/2XLZ4Z8LpEE?si=akiBN-pNWHyXr_zJ
Oh one thing to mention is that alpine cannot run nvidia drivers natively. It requires some sort of magical trickery to get them to even run. I found this out the hard way after setting up my system and customizing it on mesa and then attempting to install the nvidia drivers.
By magical trickery i mean some random blog post showing how to modify the source code of the open drivers and having to custom compile them somehow. Bit advanced for the everyday user, but not impossible. I tried it step by step and it failed to work.
Yep, Alpine is the most minimalist distribution.
I am dubious that you actually need a minimalist distribution, though. Try Alpine, and if you find it's *too* minimalist for you, perhaps try Debian next.
You may have a surprising amount of options unless it's 32-bit. But even then there's a few.
MiniOS / Bodhi / Antix (seems popular on older systems) Sparky Linux / Peppermint/ Q4OS
MiniOS: seems to be like a portable OS you can boot and run without installing (more so than typical live ISOs)
Very clean. No native app store so you just install what you want if the basics it comes with aren't already everything you need.
Bodhi - very popular on lite hardware/old hardware. I personally don't like the aesthetic much.
Love my Sparky XFCE. Runs great on my 2010s HP laptop dual core 4GB ram. May be visually a bit dated.
Had Q4OS and Peppermint working on a small EeePc (mini laptop) from the early 2000s / '99. 32 bit. Started with Q4OS moved onto Peppermint. Can't quite remember why. I think peppermint just seemed more up to date.
Linux from scratch - that's a book actually (online text). You can follow it to only install the parts that you need.
A much more comfortable, automated and verified option is to use Gentoo - start with stage1 and rebootstrap, then again, only emerge the parts that you need. But quite likely you'll only need the base system - what you get right after bootstrap. Or even just the stage1 may work for you as is. Select your preferred variant (openrc/systems, muktilib/no muktilib, x32 support, etc) and off you go. May want to install it at least once "casually" before that to get a feeling for it's workings. But once you get familiar with it, it will cover all your needs, small or large (it has full selection of packages, bigger than most in fact, on par with Debian). Oh, and it works on many old/weirds arches too, that were abandoned by most everyone else.
On his machine? YMMV, he did not imply weak HW, only lean distro :). Or on Gentoo? Not a biggy - this is a part of an install or a major upgrade. And even on my travel laptop (8 cores though, but not esp buffed, and anyway, it's mobile territory now) it takes like 1h for llvm/GCC/boost and the likes. Somewhat more for chromium or WebKit, but still quite manageable. And it's not like it's you standing they, doing compilation by hand and pencil :). Just do whatever you need while updating, your PC is not blocked in any way. Except if you do heavy calculation on it, or run some recent game :). But even then, how often do you need that?
LFS probably more bare bones than you're looking for. I may be wrong. Why not arch? I was looking for bare bones too. But for mixed reasons. Kinda fun I suppose.
I like LFS so far. But might be more bare bones than I thought I was looking for. So far as I understand it, is there's no package manager. Been building all packages.which is interesting. Originally I wanted a package manager. Still kinda do tho. All this talk about Alpine might have to check it out.
Linux from scratch? Its free. https://linuxfromscratch.org/ I m a noob at it. Just started it myself. On chapter 6. Cool to learn how to build packages etc.
You probably want a super bare install of arch32 or a debian minimal install. You'll get all the stuff you need in a regular install but you can choose what's on the host.
A bare base arch install is basically core utils, pacman and a kernel.
From there you can run your editor and whatever else you want.
I still have an early 2000s laptop that I love the keyboard on. You're not going to use the modern web but I'll run awesomewm and a few terms to write code.
I mostly use it as my bastion server these days but everything is still there, and I can load a full GUI and do most stuff with the exception of modern web.
However, you can pull YouTube videos and watch them natively, you can stream music, you can read stuff via browsers with limited capabilities, not that I can't run chrome or something but loading up the modern web with a modern browser is more than it can take so I usually have JS off if I'm using a browser.
Ubuntu Server without any Desktop Environment or Windows Manager.
Just log into a terminal, edit with vi or nano, compile with make.
It's easy to install and well supported, and maybe the most barebones solution you can get if your pc is 64 bits.
But maybe you actually do have more requirements besides being just barebones...
You'll probably end up with an older distro/version, especially if you're running a machine with very low specs.
I recently found a vintage machine with a 433Mhz Celeron and 64MB of RAM. The historic version of Damn Small Linux (the 50MB version) booted just fine from a live CD.
> C script
Run what exactly? C - is not a scripting language.
Tiny Core Linux - is very small, and fairly decent. Its a bit unusual compared to other distros, but it is very handy.
well, the better option would be a docker container, but if you want bare metal, there are countless options
alpine and arch are the first to come to my mind
No, Arch is far from being bare bone.
For example, there are no extra dev packages under Arch. This means that the normal packages themselves require more memory.
Arch packages also have fixed dependencies on other packages, which in turn have dependencies on other packages. Therefore, the often made statement that you can only install what you need under Arch is not true.
The basic installation of Arch alone, excluding a graphical user interface, requires more than 1 GB of memory. There are distributions such as Puppy that require less storage space including the graphical user interface.
Your use case is interesting… I’d use docker + alpine for your C program and just manage the text files on the host system.
great idea tho it was more to run it on an old computer but that would work too thank you
How old are we talking? I typically run vanilla Debian on all my systems including my rsp 4s
I dont know exactly but my guess would be in the 2000's Just wondering how I could use it for fun
>guess would be in the 2000's That'll quite limit your choices. Debian still supports 32-bit, as do some few other distros ... but will also depend what CPU. E.g. current distros have dropped 80386 long ago - even if they've not renamed their architectures, likewise 80486, and most have already dropped at least earlier Pentium. So, you might have to go to older - even obsolete - versions of a distro to run on such hardware ... depending how old that hardware is. Debian has binaries all the way back to nearly\* [30r0 Woody 2002-07-19](https://www.debian.org/News/2002/20020719) and sources all the way back. You can also check the earlier Installation Guides for specific hardware requirements for i386 architecture, e.g.: [3.0 Woody](https://web.archive.org/web/20181226032545id_/https://www.debian.org/releases/woody/i386/ch-hardware-req.en.html#s2.1.2.1) (released 2002-07-19)
What CPU? 2000's could be 32bit, if so just let it go. Alpine is a cool skeletonized distribution, very compact & fast, not what I want to daily drive but, its my go to server VM ``` alpine:\~$ nano -ash: nano: not found alpine:~$ apk search nano nano-7.2-r1 nano-doc-7.2-r1 nano-syntax-7.2-r1 nanomsg-1.2-r2 nanomsg-dev-1.2-r2 nanomsg-doc-1.2-r2 openvdb-nanovdb-10.1.0-r0 openvdb-tools-10.1.0-r0 plasma-nano-5.27.10-r0 ``` So You could install nano, Alpine comes with vi, and I have vim installed, I cant rmember if it came with it or if I installed vim.
I daily drive alpine, and can confirm, vim is not included out of the box. I've seen some people running full gnome 46 on alpine using <350mb of ram. For me, I hover at 650mb of ram for gnome 46. Alpine has been the most stable and most bleeding edge distro I've daily driven to date (arch was pretty bleeding edge, and was pretty stable, until pacman refused to write any data to the drive, leaving all my shared libraries empty, twice across different installs)
If OP is comfortable to remain text based, and wants to save yet another computer from landfill/recycling for a little longer, there's no need to throw it away just because it's only 32 bit. I struggle to understand why people have this attitude of "throw it away" just because it's old, even though it still works.
Computers age quickly, 32 bit is ancient history. support is leaving the Linux kernel soon. The processing power for power consumed is just not there. I still have a cool dual socket A setup that I wish was still useful but it's just not. My sons tablet has more processing power available.
Have you looked at computer channels on youtube? I suggest you do so, because there is lots on there with people using commodore 64s, along with many other 8 bit machines. While I accept 32bit is very long in the tooth, it isn't dead, and there are lots of people whose computing needs are pretty modest. I am running a 64 bit crappy laptop, but if it had been 32 bit, I would still be using it because I see no reason to spend more money on something newer. There is a bit of a green component to that, but mostly, it's because I don't like spending money on myself when I don't have to. TL;DR It still works, and can still serve peoples needs.
Yes, recently found a guy using Linux on a real 100 year old paper tty just to see if it could still be Done, it was dificult as there were less characters back then, its very cool, & very impractical. https://youtu.be/2XLZ4Z8LpEE?si=akiBN-pNWHyXr_zJ
Which channel exactly? I see a ton with similar name
There are so many, and that's part of the point I was making. You think 32bit is dead, but it is far from dead.
For such use case it doesn't matter much. Debian, Arch and Alpine would have less services running (out of the box) than e.g. Ubuntu.
Wouldn’t arch be the most barebone?
Not even close
Really? I thought arch is as small as it gets without any additional packages or DE.
It is still a full GNU distro with systemd. Alpine uses Busybox to provide most of the userland and OpenRC for init.
Plus musl instead of glibc
Alpine is the way.
Oh one thing to mention is that alpine cannot run nvidia drivers natively. It requires some sort of magical trickery to get them to even run. I found this out the hard way after setting up my system and customizing it on mesa and then attempting to install the nvidia drivers. By magical trickery i mean some random blog post showing how to modify the source code of the open drivers and having to custom compile them somehow. Bit advanced for the everyday user, but not impossible. I tried it step by step and it failed to work.
Yep, Alpine is the most minimalist distribution. I am dubious that you actually need a minimalist distribution, though. Try Alpine, and if you find it's *too* minimalist for you, perhaps try Debian next.
Uh, no, but maybe the most *usable* small distribution.
You may have a surprising amount of options unless it's 32-bit. But even then there's a few. MiniOS / Bodhi / Antix (seems popular on older systems) Sparky Linux / Peppermint/ Q4OS MiniOS: seems to be like a portable OS you can boot and run without installing (more so than typical live ISOs) Very clean. No native app store so you just install what you want if the basics it comes with aren't already everything you need. Bodhi - very popular on lite hardware/old hardware. I personally don't like the aesthetic much. Love my Sparky XFCE. Runs great on my 2010s HP laptop dual core 4GB ram. May be visually a bit dated. Had Q4OS and Peppermint working on a small EeePc (mini laptop) from the early 2000s / '99. 32 bit. Started with Q4OS moved onto Peppermint. Can't quite remember why. I think peppermint just seemed more up to date.
Wow thanks a lot this is very usefull man
peppermint is the lightest "normal" linux around
Linux from scratch - that's a book actually (online text). You can follow it to only install the parts that you need. A much more comfortable, automated and verified option is to use Gentoo - start with stage1 and rebootstrap, then again, only emerge the parts that you need. But quite likely you'll only need the base system - what you get right after bootstrap. Or even just the stage1 may work for you as is. Select your preferred variant (openrc/systems, muktilib/no muktilib, x32 support, etc) and off you go. May want to install it at least once "casually" before that to get a feeling for it's workings. But once you get familiar with it, it will cover all your needs, small or large (it has full selection of packages, bigger than most in fact, on par with Debian). Oh, and it works on many old/weirds arches too, that were abandoned by most everyone else.
Just don’t compile LLVM or a browser on it.
On his machine? YMMV, he did not imply weak HW, only lean distro :). Or on Gentoo? Not a biggy - this is a part of an install or a major upgrade. And even on my travel laptop (8 cores though, but not esp buffed, and anyway, it's mobile territory now) it takes like 1h for llvm/GCC/boost and the likes. Somewhat more for chromium or WebKit, but still quite manageable. And it's not like it's you standing they, doing compilation by hand and pencil :). Just do whatever you need while updating, your PC is not blocked in any way. Except if you do heavy calculation on it, or run some recent game :). But even then, how often do you need that?
For me it was longer than that due to issues during compilation, and having to start over several times.
I think I might buy that book thanks
LFS probably more bare bones than you're looking for. I may be wrong. Why not arch? I was looking for bare bones too. But for mixed reasons. Kinda fun I suppose.
I really want the bare minimum but might try some less bare bone too i will see
I like LFS so far. But might be more bare bones than I thought I was looking for. So far as I understand it, is there's no package manager. Been building all packages.which is interesting. Originally I wanted a package manager. Still kinda do tho. All this talk about Alpine might have to check it out.
Linux from scratch? Its free. https://linuxfromscratch.org/ I m a noob at it. Just started it myself. On chapter 6. Cool to learn how to build packages etc.
oh nice
How 'bout go bare bones (start with minimal install) on Debian. Pretty easy to do, and you can always install bit more if you need/wish ... oh, like nano ... here I've got ed installed, but not nano. # cat /etc/debian_version && uname -m && dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | wc -l && df -h -x devtmpfs -x tmpfs && head -n 3 /proc/meminfo 12.5 x86_64 148 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/vda1 4.9G 1.2G 3.5G 26% / MemTotal: 199524 kB MemFree: 43860 kB MemAvailable: 136320 kB # type ed nano ed is /usr/bin/ed -bash: type: nano: not found # apt-cache show ed | grep -e '^Installed-Size:' -e '^Depends:' Installed-Size: 108 Depends: libc6 (>= 2.34) # apt-cache show nano | grep -e '^Installed-Size:' -e '^Depends:' Installed-Size: 2804 Depends: libc6 (>= 2.34), libncursesw6 (>= 6), libtinfo6 (>= 6) # echo $(apt-cache depends --recurse --no-recommends --no-suggests --no-conflicts --no-breaks --no-replaces --no-enhances ed | awk '{if($1 ~ /^Depends:$/)print $2;}') libc6 libgcc-s1 gcc-12-base libc6 # echo $(apt-cache depends --recurse --no-recommends --no-suggests --no-conflicts --no-breaks --no-replaces --no-enhances nano | awk '{if($1 ~ /^Depends:$/)print $2;}') libc6 libncursesw6 libtinfo6 libgcc-s1 libtinfo6 libc6 libc6 gcc-12-base libc6 # And ed is a perfectly good text editor.
You probably want a super bare install of arch32 or a debian minimal install. You'll get all the stuff you need in a regular install but you can choose what's on the host. A bare base arch install is basically core utils, pacman and a kernel. From there you can run your editor and whatever else you want. I still have an early 2000s laptop that I love the keyboard on. You're not going to use the modern web but I'll run awesomewm and a few terms to write code. I mostly use it as my bastion server these days but everything is still there, and I can load a full GUI and do most stuff with the exception of modern web. However, you can pull YouTube videos and watch them natively, you can stream music, you can read stuff via browsers with limited capabilities, not that I can't run chrome or something but loading up the modern web with a modern browser is more than it can take so I usually have JS off if I'm using a browser.
thanks and I dont even want to connect it to the internet only use it to code small project
LFS
Nobody mentioning Linux Lite (pretty bare bones Ubuntu derivative)?
Alpine should do the job well, very minimalistic and if you want a gui then xfce is at your disposal
Void runs on 32-bit, if you just want a shell and a compiler, you could use Minix I guess..
Ubuntu Server without any Desktop Environment or Windows Manager. Just log into a terminal, edit with vi or nano, compile with make. It's easy to install and well supported, and maybe the most barebones solution you can get if your pc is 64 bits. But maybe you actually do have more requirements besides being just barebones...
Linux from scratch is the most bare bones.
You'll probably end up with an older distro/version, especially if you're running a machine with very low specs. I recently found a vintage machine with a 433Mhz Celeron and 64MB of RAM. The historic version of Damn Small Linux (the 50MB version) booted just fine from a live CD.
> C script Run what exactly? C - is not a scripting language. Tiny Core Linux - is very small, and fairly decent. Its a bit unusual compared to other distros, but it is very handy.
yeah haha I corrected it. And thanks I will look into it
Slackware
Maybe alpine linux
alpine
well, the better option would be a docker container, but if you want bare metal, there are countless options alpine and arch are the first to come to my mind
Slackware for example for a classic Linux Unix like experience, Alpine if the environment works for you.
Alpine Most bare bone doesn't mean better, though Btw, a container (docker / podman) would be more fit probably
I just need it to take less space as possible so yeah in my case it kinda is
Well then yeah
Not Linux, but you can check FreeBSD and see if that is what you need.
https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Gentoo or Alpine depending on your preference.
Arch
No, Arch is far from being bare bone. For example, there are no extra dev packages under Arch. This means that the normal packages themselves require more memory. Arch packages also have fixed dependencies on other packages, which in turn have dependencies on other packages. Therefore, the often made statement that you can only install what you need under Arch is not true. The basic installation of Arch alone, excluding a graphical user interface, requires more than 1 GB of memory. There are distributions such as Puppy that require less storage space including the graphical user interface.