Militantly FREE software support.
Militantly FREE software support.
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Debian install bloat?I'm trying to get Debian onto a Pentium-M based single-board computer; to keep power use down this beast only has 256MB CompactFlash card to boot from (and provide a small partition for storage) and 256MB of RAM. I install from a USB stick and - a base install now has almost 200MB of garbage! (Admittedly probably 60MB of that is useless kernel modules.) I guess I should check up on what's happening with the Debian "embedded" project. The "good old days" (which as Billy Joel says weren't all that good) of loading the OS from a few floppies are long-gone. I do find it extremely annoying though that a "base" install has a hell of a lot more than the absolutely essential software. I would accept the "apt" system as part of a base install but now I find perl and all sorts of other gunk in there. Bookmark/Search this post with: 
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you might want to take a try at Damn Small Linux
Have you ever tried Damn Small Linux (DSL)?
Granted, it is not Debian, it is only Debian based, and the kernel 2.4 might not do what your hardware needs. But it is an awesome little distro crammed into only 50MB which you could use with the 'toram' cheat code on boot up allowing for a complete OS upload into the RAM and freeing any and all disks. I often get 4+hours on my old laptop with this trick (make sure to swapoff for best results).
Also - DSL extensions are fantastic and with a couple of clicks you can add tons of software to the original 50MBs. You can even install APT.
HTH!
VS
Motto: chown -R linux:GNU world
Distros: Debian, Kanotix, Frenzy, Damn Small Linux