Light Weight Virtual Machines / *nix Distributions [closed]

Solution 1:

Small/Lightweight Unix Distibutions

These are lists of small/minimal distributions:

VMWare

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.

VirtualBox

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.

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

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