Best way to get minimal system

Bill Davidsen davidsen at tmr.com
Tue Jan 5 21:05:18 UTC 2010


Paul W. Frields wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 12:28:55AM +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>> On Tue, 2010-01-05 at 09:22 +1100, Chris Smart wrote:
>>> Hi all, what's the best way to get a minimal Fedora system?
>> What do you mean by minimal?
> 
> If you mean just the base system kernel, libraries, and yum and its
> dependencies, and you don't want to use kickstart to do it, you can
> get a reasonable facsimile by installing from the netinstall ISO and
> deselecting every package group.
> 
> You need to do this with the "Customize selection" option, rather than
> simply turning off the small number of extra capabilities shown on the
> general users screen.  If you leave something selected behind the
> scenes, its dependencies will bring in a lot of non-minimal stuff.
> 
> The result is about 200 packages (a few hundred MB, depending on how
> you count exactly) installed, and a text/CLI only system.  You'll need
> to configure the network with system-config-network (since there's no
> NetworkManager available) and then you can go to town. :-)
> 
I think I remember a click box for "minimal system" install, which was a good 
idea for this.

Suggestion: This would be a great option to have at the start of a custom 
installation, to uncheck everything for the user, who could then install the 
minimal things needed from there. In other words, it would be a starting point, 
not "this is all I want" option.

On servers it is sometimes useful to have a few X applications to be run to a 
server on remote machines withut a local server and the tom of cruft that entails.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot




More information about the fedora-list mailing list