Least Function Linux

With big-tech tracking and cybercriminals running rampant, I'm getting more and more concerned about having too much functionality on my computer. Therefore I've been looking for a small linux distro, that per default doesn't have much, but can still be "upgraded" to suit whatever needs I might have in the long run. There are plenty of those minimal distros out there (I've been looking at Absolute and Puppy especially) but I have a really hard time finding their documentation how they locked down the distro. Do lain know of any minimal distros, that can also document what they essentially has "turned off" to make the distro so minimal?

>>68344 I don't know about its documentation besides that it's good for solving issues, but void linux is very small and fast (comparatively), and uses small, hackable modules such as runit and acpid instead of systemd, elogind etc. The list of running services by default is very small, and you can strip it down further if you need. If you're really concerned, use OpenBSD. The online documentation is great, also.

>>68344 >>68345 i Thought about the same OS; void linux is very minimal for a linux OS. i literally had to install a lot of things that at firtst i took for granted would be already installed (with the last occurrence of this being telnet, but before that i had to install more obvious, daily-usage packages). For more context, before void i was a Debian user. Not really sure i can say much about documentation, since i dont think there's much other than the handbook, but i think the most accessible way of seein what doesn't come by default would be to install debian on a vm, get a list of all the packages that come by default, and then do the same on void and compare the results.

Tossing in Alpine Linux, while it's primarily for servers and embedded use it's perfectly usable on the desktop (esp. on edge, the unstable branch) and I've been daily driving it for two years without issue. Alpine's package manager, apk, has got to be the best package manager I've ever had to deal with. Like Void, it uses musl libc, unlike Void it uses OpenRC but I've had a very unsupported runit setup built off of the Void runit scripts.

I think Tails is a pretty cool intentionally minimal distro, I like how at the core of its design is discouraging the user from attempting customizations which may inadvertently compromise their security, given that this is such a common cause of failures.

tinycore linux is great for all minimal/modular/embeded stuff of all kind. Artix is good linux distro too which i can recommend. Also consider using 9front and co. I feel similar towards the situation, in my experience you should have special purpose machines and co, its complex but a layered system where everything does what it is supposed to is so much superior than general purpose computing.

Mate just use Gentoo, you get to control literally everything, slap that bad boy on a system with libreboot and that's as much control over what your computer does as you're gonna get nowadays. Now if you got to the point of not trusting your compiler not to embed bad code into binaries (and thus into other compilers) well you're kinda fuarrrked unless you deside to write your own from scratch (which can be done btw, look at tcc for an example)

>>68344 >Therefore I've been looking for a small linux distro, that per default doesn't have much, but can still be "upgraded" to suit whatever needs I might have in the long run. Gentoo would be perfect if you have at least 8GB of RAM (preferably 16GB) and at least a quad-core CPU. With Gentoo's package manager (Portage) you can use USE flags to remove or enable functionality on per-package basis. See the attached text file for more details (but the official Gentoo Handbook covers everything you need to know). The attached text file has a sample make.conf file (the global system config for Portage). If you want an OS that has binary packages, I recommend Alpine Linux or using OpenBSD. Alpine Linux is really small Linux distro (it has musl LibC and it uses Busybox for everything by default).

>>68588 >install gentoo pasta Disregard the advice about using "slub_debug=P page_poison=1". Nowadays, it's better to use different Linux cmdline parameters: https://voidlinux.org/news/2021/03/OpenSSL-hardening-updates.html

I have multiple ssds and devices for specific tasks. Alpine is good and very minimal. You will always be at risk if you're executing third party code on your system. I have one system that is connected to the internet. Then I run a capture card and display port cable to another system that is offline except for that one video link to the networked machine I can pull up in a window anytime.

I run the minimum install of PeppermintOS on an old 2009 netbook. I recall it being only 2gb, but a website states it takes 4gb. Maybe that's the standard install with a lot of applications. It's a neat little distro. Other than that, maybe a custom arch install could be stripped down to the bare minimum of functionality.

>>68344 Stop distrohoping, embrace OpenBSD

>>68375 Vouch for Alpine. Currently run it on my homeserver and ive run it on desktops and laptops before.

>>68344 I can only side with the other lainons so far. Void Linux is a great choice and I use it on many systems. Runit is an amazing and hackable init system, and if you want things not to function, well then basically all proprietary software will not run on a musl system without flatpak, gcompat or a glibc chroot. For a similar reason I can also recommend Gentoo Linux, it is probably the most amount of control you can have over a linux system while maintaining a manageable amount of abstractions and usability.

>>68344 debian or openBSD just works

>>68583 >Mate just use Gentoo, you get to control literally everything any opinions on slackware? i think it was another distro focused on giving the user as much control as possible (i know it's not a minimal OS, i'm talking purely about having control here)

If you were going to create a distro, what would you call it? I'd choose "Wire"

>>70401 I'm not that lain, but I used to use Slackware. You get a lot of control around third party software installation since it's really easy to write SlackBuild files for any software you want. Since it doesn't know what a dependency is you can install whatever versions of stuff you want as well, really easy to downgrade third party software if you're running into issues. Though, I'd say its main focus is being as unsurprising as possible so you can use the system and not have to think about whether an upgrade will break or change something. I think it took until 2016 for Slackware to adopt pulseaudio for example. As an aside, Slackware's package manager is probably the most minimal one there is: it's shell scripts that unpack things and put them where they need to go. It's just that the cost of that minimalism is disk space, since dependency management is complexity. Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA!

>>68344 You might consider Qubes. It operates under a different paradigm where you create these templates that get reset after you use them. This creates a safer OS where each application can run In its own VM and for the most part do not share memory or disk with each other or the host.