Take the 2-minute tour ×

Does anyone maintain a list of Light Weight *nix distributions, ideally just a VM that can be downloaded.

share|improve this question

closed as not constructive by Chris S Nov 27 '12 at 6:27


8 Answers 8

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Small/Lightweight Unix Distibutions

These are lists of small/minimal distributions:


Virtual Appliance Marketplace has VMWare images. Here are some minimal installs and lightweight distributions.

CentOS minimal install: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/1029

Fedora Core 4, minimal install: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/17

Fedora 10 Appliance Operating System (AOS): http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/63205

FreeBSD 6.0 minimal install: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/63

Damn Small Linux: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/54320

Debian 3.1 minimal install: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/13

OpenBSD 3.9 minimal install: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/145

Puppy Linux: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/61124

Ubuntu JeOS: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/1363

Note that some of those are 2-3 years old.


Here are a number of VirtualBox images that might be of interest: http://virtualbox.wordpress.com/

Most of those were created with default paramaters rather than minimial install, however. It does include Damn Small Linux.

share|improve this answer

Ubuntu has JeOS (Just enough OS) version designed specifically for VMs and appliances.

share|improve this answer
  • Debian (minimal install)
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • NetBSD
  • DragonFlyBSD

I've also heard that ArchLinux is pretty minimal. Slackware is probably too, but who uses Slackware anymore?

share|improve this answer
Update: Ubuntu Server edition with the virtual install option. Extremely lightweight. –  pauska Jun 21 '10 at 9:31

Tiny Core Linux is an excellent minimal distro, very modular. I've been using it for 2 years, and I'm very happy with it.

From the homepage:




The latest version: 2.11.4

share|improve this answer

DSL is the smallest most lightweight linux out there, keep in mind that its also has very basic functions, and of course you should consider the linuxes that can be deeply customized like Slackware, Debian, Gentoo and Linux From Scratch.

For a workstation the window manager is what impacts performance most so if you are looking for GUI any distro that uses XFCE or a *box(openbox,blackbox,fluxbox) window manager should be very light, stay away from gnome and KDE for they are huge.

IMHO you should give Debian + Openbox a try, it's very hard to outperform that setup.

share|improve this answer
DSL is both small and useful, but it is hardly the limiting case. Tomsrtbt does not seem to be maintained anymore, but is still available and fits on 1 floppy, and there have always been a variety of 2 floppy distributions. They just don't do much. –  dmckee Jun 29 '09 at 16:14

The Linux LiveCD list has a complete enumeration of livecd distros that you can run in VMs.

EDIT: The list is sortable, and includes the "footprint" of each CD.

share|improve this answer

OpenSUSE now has the SUSE Studio:


With both VMWare and Xen virtual-disk download formats supported. You build the system you want online through package selection and other setup screens, and download what you need. I believe it also contains a market-place of previously configured appliances other people made and published.

share|improve this answer


BitNami Virtual Machine Images contain a minimal Linux operating system and a fully configured BitNami Stack.

share|improve this answer
